


The road is dark and the night is long

by Zombieheroine



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Blind Character, Blind Soldier: 76 | Jack Morrison, Body Horror, Character Driven Plot, Enemy Lovers, Heartbreak, Love/Hate, M/M, Medical Procedures, Mental Breakdown, Mental Health Issues, Mystery, Past Relationship(s), Psychological Horror, Regret, Terrorism, Torture, Tragic Romance, past grudges, suicidal behavior
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-07
Updated: 2017-07-31
Packaged: 2018-11-28 20:10:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 52,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11425290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zombieheroine/pseuds/Zombieheroine
Summary: After Reaper's identity is revealed Morrison can't close his eyes from it again. It breaks him, and feeling responsible for someone who stood by his side for so long Soldier 76 tracks his estranged partner down.But both of them have their demons, grudges and painful truths to finally voice, so it's going to be a long night.No one knows what waits for them at the end of the line.





	1. Things that are meant to be

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello dear readers!  
> This is it. The beginning of my first ever bigbang fic. This... got out of hand and turned out to be a bunch of my headcanons and interpretations bundled together into an OTP manifest. 
> 
> Since this is a bigbang, visit the lovely [Lauraelyse](http://www.lauraelyse.com/) on tumblr to see the amazing fanart she has made for this fic! I am so happy and thankful for having to worked with her on this project. Also at her request I made a playlist for this fic so she could get into the general feeling. Should you be interested, you can find the list [here. ](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGaTZCX7RVn7imygkIgCkdeU8GPk0VVBD)
> 
> Also give a shout-out to my beta reader zinteyro who isn't even in this fandom and yet came through anyway, because he's just that dedicated.
> 
> I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed this project. Happy reading!

Fate and burn-outs were two concepts Jack Morrison had rejected from his world view.

He had seen the Omnic Crisis sweep across the world and fought in that very war, and after that he just couldn't bring himself to accept a notion of any mystical purpose or a grand plan that unfolded in the universe. He had seen random and impersonal disasters and the suffering that followed them, he had seen people come together and fall apart because of mere coincidences, and that was how the world was: it simply existed, for no reason in particular, and that was fine. There might not be a reward in store for all that had been endured, but none of it was a punishment either. 

Jack's lack of understanding of burn-outs was less about a philosophy and more about his own personal feelings. On a rational level he did understand what a burn-out was about, he understood it was an episode of major depression and a serious overload of stress, but he never quite managed to fully wrap his head around the whole concept. In his youth he had been filled with fire and determination to the point it had felt endless. The possibility of running out of drive and will to fight just hadn't touched his young, eager person.

A young soldier was capable, determined and timeless, beyond all limits. 

So, two things: Fate, or any higher plan like it or the mysterious ways of the Lord, and the possibility of being suddenly and unexpectedly drained of all your mental energy. The only two things that were impossible for him. 

Much changed in Jack Morrison's life and views of the world during his adult years, when he became a career soldier, when he didn't settle down and start a family, when he had been given his own command and left the battlefield for good, and when one day he realized he was going gray and thus must have reached middle-age. He grew and changed, but by far the greatest immediate shift happened when the ambiguous attempt to reach the next stage in human history via an organization called Overwatch went down in a ball of flames. After Zürich Jack went through a short yet drastic transformation period and emerged as a new person, but still his take on these two very much unrelated things remained the same.

Until they both changed, at the same time, because of one person.

Gabriel Reyes should have been dead. He had been put in the ground and Jack had mourned him for some time, then moved on to his new life with a new identity and a clean slate. Gabriel Reyes had been left in the past, a part of a life and a man that no longer existed. 

Jack could have gone until his inevitable death with never hearing his old name ever again, he could have fully become Soldier 76 and run himself to the ground and then into nothingness, but before that could happen fate intervened. 

Talon agents had come for whatever it was this time, and only one of their hired mercenaries guarded the rest of them as they loaded the shuttle. Jack sprinted ahead of the rest of their team to delay the take-off, but just before he entered the firing range the mercenary Reaper soared down to meet him. 

“Well hello again, Jack,” he chuckled under his mask, double shotguns drawn and pointing vaguely at Jack's midsection. “Fancy seeing you again. Are you ready to greet me properly this time? Or do I have to convince you more? Surely there's still some resemblance to what I used to be. Out of all people you should be able to recognize me even if I'm a bit of a corpse, or did I name you my emergency contact for nothing?”

Jack froze. This wasn't merely about taunting, smokescreening or confusing him. There were things that weren't written down on any reports anywhere that Reaper knew, and on top of that only he seemed to have recognized Soldier 76 as Jack Morrison. There was only one logical explanation to this madness, and that was the one person who knew Jack that well – and to have that person appear in front of him like this was absolutely an act of fate. It couldn't have been anything else than fate, it made too much sense in the grand scheme of things and at the same time was too mad and impossible to be a coincidence. And fate was, as Jack was learning, merciless and cruel. 

It looked like death had come for Gabriel Reyes but instead of accepting his fate he had beaten the Grim Reaper up, stolen his gear, and was now wearing it himself. And it was him, there was no denying it, no lying to himself about it anymore, it was Reyes, Reyes' voice and mannerisms and weapons and icy snark. 

Jack let his pulse rifle slump down in his hold and his guard with it. Exhaustion came over him like water out of a bucket, and his fire was put out just as suddenly. He was now an easy target, standing still with his weapon pointing to the ground, and he couldn't care less. 

”Aren't you supposed to be dead?” he half grunted, half sighed at the man across from him. 

Reaper chuckled dryly. ”Didn't take,” he replied.

Jack didn't have a reply to that, nor another comment to make. He expected Reaper to take advantage of his lowered guard, but then again now that he had discovered fate in the world he understood that quick death would be too merciful instead of this utter cruelty he was subjected to.

Gabriel Reyes stood before him, alive and well, heavily armed and on the side of the enemy. Jack couldn't process all of this at once nor could he decide which was the part that hurt him the most. All he could feel were the sudden exhaustion that had taken over him like a drug-induced haze and a sharp ache inside, and together they made him submit to the pain.

Talon was getting away. They had what they had come for, and only Reaper stood between Jack and the shuttle the Talon agents were hastily retreating to. It would have been easy to stall them, a shower of bullets or helix rockets to the right spot would have delayed the take-off long enough for his team to make it there in time, but there was a man standing in his way. 

Reaper's shoulders jumped when he laughed. ”Oh Morrison, I won't shoot you now no matter how much you'd want me to,” he chuckled while shoving his shotguns into their holsters on both sides of his hips. ”And I can see that you want me to. There are no words to describe how much I love watching how much I hurt you just by standing here. Keep that up and stay alive, so one day soon I can kill you.”

And with that Reaper's body broke down and he seemed to disappear like he had been swallowed by the Earth, but then he appeared aboard the shuttle just taking off. He waved him goodbye, and then they were gone.

Jack couldn't move, and so he stood there staring up to the dark night sky, and he was still there when the others caught up with him. Ana had to hook her arm in the crook of his and walk him away. They retreated in defeat, their odd group scattering: Lena headed back to London for a time being, Genji and McCree parted together and didn't say where they were going, Angela had been reluctant to join them in the first place and didn't make any promises of next time, and only Winston traveled back to the base in Gibraltar with Ana and Jack. 

They were back at the base early in the morning. Winston seemed to sense that something had changed in them but didn't want to intrude by asking about it, so he quickly excused himself and retreated to his laboratory. Ana and Jack were left alone outside, both tired but still awake as the sun rose.

“It's... It's really Gabriel, isn't it?” Jack asked.

Ana hummed in agreement. She had known since Egypt, but hadn't pressured Jack to accept it. 

“I should have recognized his voice. I should have... I should have put this together sooner,” Jack muttered and started to rip his gear off. He dropped his weapon duffel on the ground, threw his gloves after it and opened the zipper of his jacket. He rubbed his temples with both hands, feeling a headache coming. 

“You weren't ready,” Ana remarked. “To tell the truth, I wasn't either, but what I saw I had to accept. I gave you time because I know it is hard to realize that one has grieved for nothing.” 

“We have all inflicted that on each other,” Jack noted while unfastening his mask and visor. 

Ana nodded. “Such a strange turn of events. All three of us did that to each other and all whom we care about, and all three of us are back. For better or worse. We have much to make up for.”

“Some more than others,” Jack said and wasn't even sure who he meant exactly. He was tired, so tired, he barely had the energy to think. 

The tactical visor came off and the link to the implants bored into his skull disconnected, and when Jack opened his eyes the clear picture of the world was gone. The light of the morning sun drew some outlines and some splatters of colour in the deep mist, but for the most part the world was now covered in a blur. Jack smelled the fresh wind and the salt, heard the waves and a few early birds in the distance, probably in the trees by the cliff. He reached for Ana's elbow, and she placed her hand on top of his.

“I feel like I should cry,” Jack confessed. 

“Then cry,” Ana said, her grip on him steady and strong, exactly like it had been when she was a young woman. 

“I don't think I can,” Jack sighed.

“Then what do you think you can do?” Ana asked.

Jack didn't have the answer. What could he do? What could anyone do? He had bitterly learned some time ago how powerless one man was against the tides and turns of a crowd, and he held no illusions of his options. He didn't possess the strength to rescue anyone, much less someone who clearly didn't want or need to be rescued. 

“I just... I just want to go to bed and sleep some,” he finally said. 

“That is alright by me. It's not like we're going anywhere any time soon, it's not like the old times,” Ana said, somehow sounding firm and comforting at the same time, like she wanted to get back out there but was happy to be here too. 

Jack let Ana walk him to the room he had claimed for himself even though he could find his way alone just as well. They had set up camp in the old flight command center because they both appreciated the high ground, small and modest places and not returning to their old rooms in the barracks. Ana wished Jack both good morning and good night when they parted ways at his door.

Jack took off his boots by the door and put his duffel bag right next to them. He walked to the desk on the left side of the room and took off his jacket, put it on a back of a chair there, his kevlar vest and the rest of the body armour soon following. The visor he set carefully on the same spot at the desk as he always did, exactly where he would reach first when springing up from the bed.

When he was lighter and all his equipment were laid down in order, he found his way to his bunk, pulled the covers aside and fell on the flat mattress. Immediately after he had laid down he felt like he would never get up from there again, and that was just fine by him. He wrapped the covers around himself tightly, turned on his side and all but passed out. 

Jack slept and slept, and mostly it was a state of heavy, dreamless slumber like his brain had decided to engage in deep shut-down to avoid dealing with anything, even on a dream level. He slept and occasionally drifted towards consciousness to realize that some part of his body was numb, shifted a little bit to let the blood flow again and then fell down under once more. 

He had no idea how long he slept.  
He woke up once when the sun was shining bright and warm, then again when it was dark, and then the third time when it was either early morning or evening, he couldn't tell, just registered the amount of light before falling unconscious.

He dreamed some. He dreamed of the training camp that blurred into a childhood memory of hiding in a corn field, and he dreamed of the quiet, boring parts of the war. He dreamed of being stuck in the timeless spaces of airports at night, he dreamed of deserted laundry rooms at odd hours, he dreamed waiting for his someone back from around the world to him. Some of his dreams were memories, some were just dreams, but they mixed into each other and in his brief moments awake Jack could hardly tell them apart. 

He got up to go to the bathroom twice, and he was fairly sure that at some point Ana dropped by to coax him to sit up and drink some water. If she talked to him about anything, he didn't register any of it. 

After an unknown amount of time had passed Jack was snapped out of his comatose state by the rumbling of his stomach that was insistent enough that he awoke for good. He felt croaky and stiff and no amount of rubbing seemed to clear his eyes that felt like plastered shut. His mouth was dry and there was a taste like wet cardboard stuck on his tongue. His skin felt slightly clammy and he could tell his shirt stank and his hair was greasy. 

Ignoring his frankly disgusting state Jack forced himself to sit up and put his feet on the ground. His back and muscles all over protested the movement, but setting his bare feet on the cold metal floor was a much needed shock to his system and he felt a bit more awake though no less tired. He had to admit that this kind of exhaustion wasn't eased by sleeping, and now that he was awake again he had to accept the reality and thoughts that followed as well. 

_“You look like you've seen a ghost.”_

Jack rubbed his forehead trying to expel the very recent memory that was still raw like a fresh wound. Of course it was Reyes, it was his voice and his pitch-black and bitter sense of humor. He found the funny side of everything, no matter how bleak or inappropriate. 

Something twisted inside Jack, and suddenly he was grateful for his grumbling stomach because hunger pushed ahead of every other need and thought. He stood up. 

What Jack really needed was a shower and a clean set of cloths, but at this point his hunger was physically painful and so he decided he didn't care what Ana and possibly Winston thought of the smell of his sweat and settled on putting on a clean shirt before heading out. 

Gibraltar HQ as their base was more than okay with Jack. The premises were already familiar to him from his past life, and only minimum effort was required before he had an exact map of the area in his head and he could move around easily. He kept near the wall and traced it with his hand as he headed downstairs and into an old break room that was nowadays fully utilized as a kitchen. 

“Ah, good morning,” Ana greeted from the table. “I was starting to suspect you had decided to die there.” 

Jack smelled strong black tea and toast. His stomach rumbled again. “Yeah, well, I feel like I'm about to starve so your prediction is not entirely unfounded.”

“There are left-overs in the fridge, in a box on the second topmost shelf,” Ana answered, her voice slightly muffled by something, probably a tea mug. 

Left-overs sounded great whatever they were, so Jack reached on the shelf according to the instructions and took out a plastic container. He peeled off the lid, inhaled the smell while squinting at the contents, deeming it to be chicken and something else. He didn't question it, just picked up a fork, headed to the table, took a seat and immediately started to shovel in the food. 

They sat in silence while Jack ate the plain oven-baked chicken and what turned out to be couscous. A teaspoon clinked in Ana's mug occasionally, and toast crumbled. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” Ana suggested when she finally got enough of the silence. 

Jack searched the container with his fork, hunting down the last shreds of cold chicken. “What's there to talk about?” he grunted. Even the chicken brought back memories he'd rather not recall; Reyes had always spiced his cooking too much on purpose, and through the years Jack had slowly gotten used to it and started to appreciate it. They had dined together thousands of times. The number felt both great and meaningless all at once. 

“Nonsense, Jack,” Ana said impatiently. “We both know we're not about to sit on our hands and let this be.”

Jack turned his face towards Ana and gave her a look that probably looked defeated despite his best efforts to remain firm and neutral. He missed his mask. He sighed. “So Reyes is alive. He's with Talon. We're enemies now and judging by the amount of firefights we've been in he's not about to go easy on us just because we used to be friends. What do you wanna talk about?”

Ana huffed and the tea mug hit the tabletop. “Jack, avoiding this topic won't make it clear up,” she said, then held a small pause. “After Overwatch fell, almost half of us became mercenaries. I... used to think we and our agents were somehow above that. That we wouldn't take that path.” 

Jack made an agreeing sound. “You and me both. Turns out we were nothing more than just another pack of soldiers, and more often than not soldiers will stay soldiers,” he said. “Reyes was always a soldier. I should have known.”

“No one could have predicted any of this,” Ana gently argued. Her hand reached out to touch Jack's wrist. “Besides, something has happened to Gabriel. He's not... He's not himself.”

Jack shrugged, rubbing the back of his neck. “Or he's just changed, Ana. He's on a different job now, one that probably suits him better than any army ever did. He can call all the shots himself now.” He internally winced at his own bitterness.

“You don't mean that,” Ana said, just as bitter. She sighed heavily. “You didn't see his face, but you've seen him in a battle. He's not like he used to be, and I mean that as in – “ she paused to search for the right word, “ – human. He doesn't feel like a human anymore, Jack.”

Jack didn't have an answer to that. Of course he had noticed that something had changed, something being pretty much everything. His weapons of choice hadn't changed and it wasn't about this Reaper-persona Reyes had created for himself either – if anything, those two things were what was left of the old Reyes: Why fix something that wasn't broke, so of course he had his favored weapons, and as for the new look, he had probably thought it funny to dress up as Death for a job of killing people. 

“You know what he's doing nowadays?” Ana asked, careful. 

Jack nicked his head to the side, noncommittal. 

Ana answered her own question: “He's going after former Overwatch agents and everyone in the international community who was ever involved with it.”

Jack felt the exhaustion again, strong and paralyzing. He wanted to go back to bed. “Yeah, I figured. Not all of those could be Talon hits, they're too mundane. It's his personal vendetta.” Guilt flickered alive in his gut and stung him even through the death sleep that was upon him. 

“Don't tell me that doesn't matter,” Ana said. “If either one of us really, truly cares about this world we'll fight him on this.”

Jack wasn't sure if he still could roll his eyes, so he rolled his shoulders and let his head tilt to the side. “Well, his agenda puts you and me right on top of his list, so we shouldn't sweat about hunting him down.” 

Fabric rustled, and Jack imagined Ana crossing her arms. “Jack. You just spent five days straight in your bed. You can't even speak his name. You are not alright, and you are most certainly not as indifferent as you're trying to make me believe.”

Another wave of exhaustion washed over Jack. He missed his bed. The left-overs were gone down to the last crumb and he set his fork down. He combed his hand through his hair, all the way down to the back of his neck. He took a shuddering breath. 

“It's... It's really Gabriel,” he forced himself to say. “It's really him.”

“Yes,” Ana agreed, somewhat reluctantly. 

“He's alive. Gabriel is alive,” Jack continued.

“Yes.”

“And he wants to kill us.”

Ana paused to take a deep breath. “So it would seem. Unless someone stops him.”

Jack felt a whole new kind of weight settling over his shoulders. Gabriel hadn't been his best friend and partner in a long, long time, and yet somehow Jack felt responsible. “ _Somebody_ has to do it,” he muttered.


	2. Man on a mission

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, dear reader. Here I am with the second half of our thematic beginning. Let's meet Reaper, shall we?
> 
> I enjoyed writing him so much.

Discipline and methodical organizing kept Gabriel Reyes on top of things. He had a brief yet strict work ethic that he had adopted before he even turned twenty, and that had gotten him through army service, the war, black ops and now work as a independent contractor. He was a closed system, a professional soldier through and through, someone who functioned both alone and with a team and always, always got the job done. 

First rule was to set a strict code for himself and never deviate from it. He planned every step of a mission, every single thing about the preparations, he planned the attack as well as the extraction, he kept his equipment in perfect condition and always at hand. He made sure his every job was clean, he moved with purpose and never fumbled, never misstepped. He knew exactly where he was supposed to be at each moment, and he made sure he followed through.

Keeping things in order and under control at all times was the second rule and nearly as important. During his long career Gabriel had met and worked with many professional soldiers and agents who followed the first rule about battle plans and equipment maintenance, but off the clock were complete and total disasters. Personal belongings, background research, paperwork before turning it in – all that wasn't under regulations or in a file was just scattered around. That was not the way to the top, and certainly not an acceptable way to manage a business, Gabriel had known that from the beginning. He didn't think his organizing skills played any small part in his rapid raise through the ranks, and now, alone and outside of every chain of command it was a matter of life and death. 

A whiteboard with magnets and post-it notes was how it had been done in the army, and that was how he did it these days. Gabriel liked to keep his research, plans and thoughts organized, and having them all on display and accessible was a system that kept giving good results. 

He had a marker between his teeth while he stuck post-it notes with answers to the inquiries written on the board on their assigned places. He hadn't even taken off all his battle gear yet even though today's work was done and he was at his temporary safe house, so eager was he to fill in his latest finding on this little personal project of his. 

When all the post-its were in their proper places he took the marker and then with his free hand fished out a paper-copy of a photograph that went in the middle of the graph. 

Soldier 76 was a thorn in the side of virtually anyone who made their living in the underworld business. He was one of the most wanted targets there was, had been for the past six years, and Gabriel wanted that prize to go to Reaper. But despite all the time and effort dedicated to tracking and researching the man, he was a ghost. No ties, no employments, no successful shadows. And after all that time, who was under that mask?

Gabriel hadn't ever been one to believe in fate, and this changed nothing. If anything this proved that the world was just as chaotic and absurd as he had believed, because what great meaning could there be in throwing Jack Morrison back at a man like Gabriel Reyes? 

And it was Morrison, it had to be. Once the idea had taken root it did away with the doubts about his miraculous survival of Zürich, and now Reaper was after his sweetest kill yet, the one at the top of his list. 

He had a list, and a long one too. A list of people he wanted to rid this world of for no other reason than to have their blood to sip before his own time came, and learning that Jack Morrison was still alive and kicking couldn't have made Gabriel happier: Morrison belonged on the top of that list, the sweet number one he wanted to sink his claws in the most. 

Everything was his fault. Of every single moment of pain and humiliation Gabriel could rightfully blame Morrison, even when others were directly responsible at the source it was still Morrison, every single time. He was the grand prize, the very essence of what Gabriel needed to satisfy his thirst for blood and complete his revenge. The totality of his mission was to put an end to the miserable story of Overwatch, but Gabriel had to admit that before it included Morrison it had felt like slicing up a headless body. 

The photo of Morrison went on the middle of the white board in a place all the other lines connected. For a moment Gabriel considered writing his real name under the photo according to his system, but a little voice from the back of his head whispered another suggestion. He should leave it blank, just because this affair was so deeply personal. Too personal to even write down, so personal it belonged only in his thoughts, in the absolute privacy where no one else could reach it and steal his prize. Jack Morrison's life belonged to him and him alone, and that was what made him put the marker away and break his own code. 

His homework was done, and he continued shedding his gear. Reaching and yanking and peeling the equipment off was a long and painful process. There was never any warning which turn or stretch was painful today, or where an injury had reached necrosis and was now blackened and moist and staining his clothes. The coat was the easiest part, but the body armour not so much. Today there were no wounds, just old ones that couldn't decide whether to heal or not, and his constant companion pain that was never far away. 

He hanged the coat, set the boots aside, piled the armour, folded his undershirt and set his gauntlets on the side. The mask stayed on. He changed into white sweats and a sweatshirt and started to clean his gauntlets and guns. He took both of his shotguns apart, cleaned and oiled them and put them back together. He did everything in the same order as always. 

The safehouse was just one room with a kitchen corner, tiny bathroom and a sofa bed. When Gabriel was done with his equipment maintenance he moved to the sofa bed and opened his work laptop, setting it on the low coffee table. He turned on the news feed and left it on. 

In the middle of the coffee table sat a jigsaw puzzle. The picture on the cover was a painting of a garden, and on the low corner the box said “1000 pieces”. Gabriel opened the box, set the lid to stand on its side for reference and turned the box over spreading the puzzle pieces on the coffee table and started to sort and shuffle them while the feed from the computer kept going. 

There had been an explosion at a bus station in Prague, relatively low death-toll and no clue of the perpetrators yet. A summary of UN's bi-annual conference that relied strongly on press-releases and only odd actual direct comment from ambassadors. Russia was experiencing a budding crisis with omnics but the word crisis was avoided, most likely on purpose. A commentator spoke over a Russian politician in a manner that was already resembling a rant and claimed that Russia was dealing with the omnic threat just fine on their own with the strength of their army, and anything even resembling Overwatch was not only unnecessary but also unwanted. The commentator had done his research well and went through a list of failed and disastrous Overwatch missions from ten years ago in great detail, and reminded the audience that all unsupervised activity involving guns and violence was terrorism of sorts, no matter the context. This was real world, not a superhero movie. 

The commentator went on to call out the international community and their powerlessness. He named several ambassadors and reminded the audience of their past, dug up dirt, some real and some speculated, and questioned the human-omnic relations and the motives behind them. Gabriel didn't focus too much, but he picked up on a few familiar names, some involved with Overwatch who were once “innovative” and “reaching over borders” but now they were called “pro-violence” and “authoritarian”. When it came to human-omnic relations, Gabriel already knew that people just wanted all that living tech for their own use as it was the most advanced anyone had ever seen, and it could stop being so living as well. Gabriel didn't really see or care for the fuss, omnics were nothing special in his eyes.

Gabriel had the outline of the garden almost ready before him. The corners were all there, and the insides of the puzzle were also filling up nicely. There was grass and trimmed rose-bushes, wild flowers and some sort of a tree with a swing there. A picture of serenity. 

A ping from the laptop reminded Gabriel of a routine. He glanced at the screen, and a notification had popped to remind him it was medication o'clock. He hated this part of a day, even though today was an unusually good one.

He though that being technically dead should mean that your body no longer needed care, but the opposite seemed to be true. He had gotten used to the gnawing feeling of the nanobots working, but still his body followed a cycle of rebuilding and decaying that he needed to observe and tend to. He inspected his joints starting from his feet and working up his body. There was minimal grinding, no splintered bones or rattle, but when he moved on to stretching and squeezing he found the source of his ache: his muscles were undergoing changes, and they hurt. In some places the tissue was new, and as such tender and soft, and in some places withering away leaving behind hard and dry lumps that the nanobots worked on fixing from the inside out. Blood vessels and nerves were severing and rebuilding themselves chaotically, sending shocks of pain and partial numbness everywhere. 

His medication was in a metal case under the sofa bed. He pulled it out, set it next to him and opened it. For today he had three syringes and a handful of pills, courtesy of Talon's science club. For a terrorist organization Talon sure had their employment benefits.

The syringes weren't the hard part – it's wasn't like he hadn't gotten used to pain – but the pills required him to take his mask off. His body wasn't his own any longer, it shifted and changed and transformed, and it wasn't the loss of his looks or even the general appearance of a living human being that bothered him, it was that his body had become a lump of meat pumped full of tiny little machines that ate and molted him. 

Hiding his face behind the skull mask made it easy to pretend like he had transcended humanity, like he was some sort of an otherworldly creature from the underworld, death walking among the living, and that little game helped him distance himself from the reality enough to get him through the day. When he took off the mask he was forced to remember that he was just a man, a horrid, mutilated man who shouldn't be alive. 

He took off the mask and lovingly placed it on top of the unfinished puzzle. He felt around his face to check on it, found all the familiar burn marks and deep, scarred cuts, his jaw and teeth and both eyes where they were supposed to be. He let his hands drop from his face and emptied the vial of pills on his palm. He downed them dry with minimal difficulties, and with that his daily routine was complete. He packed the empty syringes and the vial back in the case, pushed it under the sofa and set his mask back on his face.

He went back to the puzzle, and in a minute the medication kicked in and his pain eased. Tension drained from his muscles and his mind became slightly cloudy, and when the pain was gone there was only him, his puzzle and the endless news feed on the laptop. He was almost at peace here. 

Being on his own suited Gabriel. At first it had been strange and scary to fall outside of organized chain of command, after all that had been what Gabriel had known most of his adult years – and after his long service what he had known most of his entire life – and after it no longer existed there had been a short period of disorientation before he adapted. What was funny was that in a way the life of a mercenary fit him and his nature even better than the life of a soldier ever had. Now he was free, his skills could reach their full potential and there were no artificial rules to hold him back. 

The puzzle was almost half complete. Gabriel glanced at the white board and thought about Morrison again. The pain medication did nothing to soften his anger, and his throat felt like it was squeezing shut around the amount of bitterness he tried to swallow. 

They had been best friends in what seemed like another life. They had been a perfect team in a battle, they had commanded their own squad with Gabriel as the captain and Morrison as his second-in-command, and that had been where they belonged. But it seemed that some men were their best selves only in extreme situations, because as soon as the war was over and they moved from soldiers onto Overwatch agents Morrison had changed. 

After the war what Morrison had given Gabriel was just a series of disappointments, let-downs and betrayals, and a string of broken promises left hanging in the air between them. They had parted ways, and at first it was fine, but then Morrison had been promoted and Gabriel had been tossed aside, and once they were separated into public relations and black ops there was no going back; a slow corrosion of their relationship had started there. 

The wild flowers were finished on the lower part of the puzzle, and there were no more white pieces left. Next up was probably the tree. Gabriel didn't even focus on Zürich and its aftermath that much. That was when he had been left behind for good, but Morrison had personally betrayed him a long before that. 

There was the time when a mission had ventured off script, there were casualties and the objective failed, and on top of that a cell of Talon had had Gabriel imprisoned for a while. He had later found out he hadn't been missing for more than four days, but he had been kept in a windowless dark room for the entire time, he had been interrogated, beaten, burned with needles heated in a candle's flame, dangled from the ceiling for hours and hours and forced into a box that had been barely big enough for a man of his size. He had been asked more questions and he had held his tongue, and the cycle of torture had started again when the interrogators grew frustrated with him. 

Blackwatch had found him on the fourth day and he had been rescued, there had been an official report and he took a short sick-leave, but that was it. The mission was ran completely within Blackwatch. Morrison hadn't lifted a finger to help one of his highest ranking officers, his friend, his partner. Gabriel had never forgiven him for leaving him there. 

That was the betrayal with the most physical amount of pain in it, but many smaller occasions amounted to the endgame as well. Morrison had allowed Overwatch and the world leaders deploying them to transform himself from the soldier he had been into just another diplomat. The man of action Gabriel had fought beside had become a mere paper-pusher who could recite a pretty line of words but not actually do anything. He had allowed the world to pull out his teeth and lost all his bite without putting up a fight. 

Gabriel had complained about Morrison's career path to his Abuela when he was visiting her in his childhood home in L.A., and even though she had refused to give her opinion on things that were his to decide she had clicked her tongue and hummed with disapproval at several things Gabriel mentioned. 

Puzzles had been Abuela's thing. Even now putting this one together helped Gabriel think and process. So many green pieces, it was hard to see which belonged where. 

In the end Overwatch had been filled with poison, and like a body with an infected wound the head refused to acknowledge it and get treated, instead of just getting sicker and sicker until falling apart. It went down in flames and people fell into disgrace and oblivion. 

In the end, what had Jack Morrison given Gabriel? Empty promises, pain, a place in the shadows and a forever engagement that he never claimed. 

Gabriel's fury was cold in his veins, but a shimmer of glee followed. He would get to kill Jack Morrison. Life was grand. 

He ran out of puzzle pieces. The lovely rich green painting of a garden was complete, save for one piece that was missing from the middle of the picture. Gabriel stared at the little hole in the otherwise complete puzzle, scanned the coffee table, the floor and the box, but no missing piece turned up. He cursed the second-hand games and the careless previous owner, and then took the uncompleted puzzle apart to be put back in its box.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! If you liked this make sure to leave kudos.
> 
> If you have thoughts, feelings or feedback of any kind to share, drop by in the comment section below, it would make my day.


	3. Karma

After his five-day paralysis Jack felt minimally better, which meant he functioned. He still slept more than he had in years, almost twelve hours per night, and ate only out of a habit that Ana helped him maintain, but he was up and about and crafting a plan of action. 

For now, Ana and Winston were the only other residents at Gibraltar, but the newly recalled Overwatch – if the bunch of misfits that had answered the call qualified as an organization – was operating none the less. It was too dangerous to bundle together like in the old days when they had been public and protected out in the open, but thanks to Winston and Athena the old base was very functional and well-protected so it made sense to keep them grounded there even if with a skeleton crew. Any research and planning was made there, and the communications to the recalled agents were routed there by Athena as well. 

Ana was quick to notice that what Jack was sketching out for himself had nothing to do with Overwatch or their future direction. She kept tabs on him like friends do, slipping surprisingly fluidly back into their easy friendship they used to have when they were younger. She never scolded him for his lack of self-care, just pushed food and water and a kind word in his general direction every now and then. In general she interfered very little, but was too sharp to let things slide like Winston did. 

Winston was as awkward and reclusive as he used to be so he didn't call Jack out on anything, but he also was just as kind as ever: He had gone to great lengths to gather up a computer system specially for Jack to use, which meant getting an old-fashioned keyboard and a viewing screen plus a whole lot of software to compensate for the amount of holograms and pictures, including a program to read any text aloud for him.  
After that Winston's chosen method of showing respect was from the distance. He was there when he was asked or someone needed his help, but most of his social life seemed to happen via calls and chats. 

 

During her time in the army and later Overwatch Ana had seen many people break and was no stranger to it herself either, so she didn't just assign Jack the label of crazy and assume he couldn't do anything. But despite that she didn't completely trust his judgment at the present moment either, so one day she made two cups of tea, one sweet and one strong, stepped into Jack's room and sat down next to him in front of his desk without asking permission. 

“I brought you tea, if you'd like some,” she said. “I'll put your cup here on your left, three o'clock.” 

“Thanks,” Jack muttered in passing and continued to type with a frown on his face. He had one ear-bud of headphones in, and he was clearly researching something. Several programs were running in the background. 

“How are you doing?” Ana asked behind her tea cup.

“Pretty alright, all things considered,” Jack replied. He typed fast and smoothly, barely making any errors. “I will never understand why people gave up keyboards... Always hated touch-screens anyway,” he said.

“That is not what I meant, and you know it,” Ana sighed. 

Jack's hands paused over the keyboard, and he rolled his right shoulder to shake off the awkwardness of a sudden confrontation. His left hand moved to his left to search for the tea cup, found it easily and picked it up. He pushed his chair away from the desk and turned it towards Ana. “If you want to ask something, ask away. You don't want to tip-toe around the issue and I'd like to get back to work. So shoot.”

Ana chuckled at how quickly Jack rose up to the challenge. “At least I have the decency to bring tea before I chew someone out,” she said with a lightly joking tone, making a corner of Jack's mouth tug up a little. 

“I know you're exhausted beyond belief, Jack,” she began. “You feel confused, sad and defeated. Probably loads of other things too, but at least those three. I also know that one doesn't just sleep five days straight, then get up and go back to work completely fine either, so you can drop the act, please. I know you, and I know you handle things with work, but as your friend I also need to know what you're planning.”

“What makes you think I'm planning anything?” Jack challenged before taking a sip out of the tea cup. He paused, looking impressed. “You still remember how I like my tea?”

Ana smiled to herself. “Don't change the subject,” she said firmly. “And how do I know? Well, first of all you stopped smelling so bad so obviously you have started showering again, and you're not laying in your bunk like you intend to die right there. You've gathered yourself up and you wouldn't do that for nothing.” 

Jack just huffed at that and took another sip of his tea. He might have been willing to listen but his participation in the conversation was still minimal. 

Ana hesitated for a second with her mouth already open, wondered if Jack could tell that by the pause in the conversation, and then said: “Gabriel does that to you, it's like he turns you into a superhero – “

“Don't!” Jack suddenly snapped. He looked pained, wiped his trousers where he had spilled tea, then gathered himself. “Don't make that joke anymore, please.”

Ana regarded Jack calmly with her head tilted, weighing the situation. “Forgive me,” she said. “I know this is painful for you, but please consider that you're not the only one who knew Gabriel. We all cared about him, and whatever he's planning right now concerns all of us. This is not your private little war, Jack. At least it doesn't have to be.”

Jack slumped down in his chair a bit and drank some more tea to distract Ana from it. It was an old habit of his; for a man who had been through so much and transformed into someone entirely new, there was still so much familiarity in Jack. 

“I'm planning to seek him out,” Jack said. 

Ana waited for the rest of the plan, but only silence followed. She raised her brows in disbelief. “And then what? He wants to kill you, Jack.” 

Jack shook his head and rubbed the back of his neck. “And then... I want to talk to him. Maybe he'll tell me what this is all about. If his beef with me is as personal as it seems, he'll probably gladly spill the beans.”

“And then?” Ana pressed. “He is going to _kill you_ , Jack!” It was like the message wasn't getting through to him no matter how much she tried to stress it, and frustration followed: A seasoned soldier should recognize a suicide mission when it was unfolding right in front of them. 

“I know,” Jack groaned with equal frustration. “He made it very clear last time, and the trail of corpses he's left behind him doesn't exactly leave room for interpretation!” He set the tea cup on the table and turned to the computer screen. “I've been doing some digging. I'm not sure how much you already know about this, so excuse me if I repeat some of your info. I checked on old colleagues, officers, politicians, and pretty much anyone who had anything to do with Overwatch. A lot of them have turned up dead over the last six years, and call me crazy or whatever but I recognize the handiwork in a lot of these cases.” He tapped on a few keys, and links he had gathered clicked open, revealing newspaper articles, news clips, obituaries, a few extensive reports and many smaller ones.

Ana scanned the headlines and bodies of text quickly for familiar names and spotted several. Some she had indeed been aware of since they had come up on her own private quest against Talon and organizations like it, some had been on the news all over the world after their deaths, but there were many new ones as well. Many, many new ones. 

“It's not just agents or politicians either,” Jack explained, “I found many pro-Overwatch journalists, omnic rights activists and a lot of people who had worked for Overwatch in any way. Even some people from the public relations department and tech support have turned up dead.” 

Ana felt curiously numb. She wondered if she should have been shocked, but then again she wasn't surprised by any of this. Mostly she just felt sad. “He really is going after everyone,” she muttered while staring at the screen and trying to count the bodies. 

“That he is,” Jack said, turning back to her again. “Reyes doesn't like doing things by halves. It's always everything or nothing with him.” 

“All the more reason to come up with a better plan than to just call him up and propose a little chat,” Ana pointed out. “How do you predict that will go? He might want to get some things off of his chest, sure, but he is also heavily armed, deeply merged within Talon ranks and, as I keep reminding you, out for your blood.”

Jack groaned and slumped down on his chair a little more. “I don't know, Ana!” he said towards the ceiling. “I don't know, but what I do know is that I have to try. I have to know.”

“This isn't your responsibility,” Ana said lowly, each word meticulously articulated. 

“And what if it is?” Jack argued. “It kind of is, that's what I think.”

Ana shook her head even though Jack couldn't see it. “Don't do that to yourself. Don't take all of that upon yourself, it's not fair and it's not right. You have a place among us, and no good or rightful power in the world would blame the past on you alone.”

Jack gave her a halfhearted smile, his right hand rubbing at the gray stubble on his scarred cheek. “It's not that, Ana, I promise,” he said in the best comforting tone he could manage with his rasping, ruined voice and limited mental energy. “It's just the past catching up with me.” 

“Gabriel is not your – “

“But he is,” Jack said before Ana could finish. 

Ana sighed, sipped her tea and tried a new angle. “Why do you feel that he is? Please, do share.”

“Because of course he is,” Jack insisted, “I can't explain it, it just is so. We were partners for so long, we had command together, we fought in the war, we saved each other's lives more times than I bothered to count, Ana! You just can't ignore something like that. And then Overwatch... I know we were in different departments, but we were still in that together, the two top-ranking commanders.”

“All three of us were,” Ana noted. 

Jack sighed, but nodded. “I know. I didn't mean to shut you out or anything, it's just...”

“This better not still be about the position of the Strike-Commander,” Ana warned with her eye narrowed. It was a pity that Jack saw her still very striking look of disapproval so rarely. 

“It's not about that,” Jack said, “...I think. No, no it's not about that. It's about... We left him behind. I left him there. He became something... _something_ , because I left him there in the rubble! I have to know what happened, I have to know where he's been and why he's doing all of this.”

Ana closed her eye and took a deep, calming breath. She had only heard of the Zürich incident from the news and hadn't pried any more details from Jack either. Even after all these years it was still a sore spot, the culmination of all that had gone wrong, all the mistakes they had made, the absolute point of their failure. Ana might not have been there, but that wound radiated its pain to her as well. “I know I wasn't here, but has it occurred to you that this might just be that survivor's guilt we were constantly warned about while in service?”

Jack pressed his mouth in a tight line and gave Ana an unimpressed look. “I told you: This is about Reyes and I. Yes, there might be guilt, but that is normal. It's not really about that past, it's not about Overwatch, it's not about who was wrong and who was right... I don't need my mistakes weighed for me, I already know what they are and I carry them, I just... Hmm.” Jack fell silent again, brows furrowed and cloudy eyes staring ahead. 

His gaze used to flicker around when he was nervous or thoughtful, but now he was steadier. Ana wasn't sure where the credit was due, his blind eyes or the age and experience on his shoulders. Wasted time between them made her heart ache. 

“May I remind you that whatever you decide it will be about Overwatch. We're part of it still – or again, whichever suits you,” she said. 

Jack snorted and shook his head. “Overwatch... Dammit,” he grunted, mostly to himself, and took a large gulp out of his tea cup. “I'm too old for that.”

Ana clicked her tongue and huffed at his notion. “You're fifty-four, Jack! It's not that old, and you're talking like my eighty-year-old grandfather used to.”

That made Jack laugh, a real, honest sound accompanied by a grin that emphasized the lines around his mouth and eyes. “Fifty-five since a month ago,” he reminded her. “And I still insist that even though age is just a number a man should be allowed to feel old when he goes gray.” 

“Well you had the whole of three shades to go before gray,” Ana chuckled. “Are you telling me you've felt old since your were forty?”

Jack shrugged, still half grinning. “War does that to a man.” 

“Indeed,” Ana said. Even though it made his wrinkles more prominent, smiling made Jack look younger somehow, like his old self, the one Ana used to know. She felt a tug of longing for the “good old days” like the English phrase went when she looked at her friend like this. There was something left of Jack's boyish charm and good humor somewhere under all the gray and constant irritation he basically radiated nowadays, and even though Ana would never say it out loud Jack kind of _did_ remind her of an old dog. He had once been kind, energetic and open, always making sure everyone felt and did their best, but had now turned snappy, reclusive and impatient with others and would rather curl up in his basket than socialize with anyone. In a way Ana was afraid that he would run away or crawl under the porch to die alone just like an old dog would, to be alone and spare the people close to him the pain and trouble. 

Ana's tea was gone and she turned the still warm cup over in her hands to keep them busy. “Jack, you know I care about you, and I want to help you in any way I can,” she started, choosing her words carefully, “but I'm not going to let you go out there and kill yourself.” 

Jack shifted on his seat, visibly tense and awkward before the subject. “I know, Ana, I know. I'm sorry, but trust me when I say that this is not a suicide mission. I'm not doing it to kill myself, I promise.”

Ana hummed to herself. “So you have made up your mind already, then?”

Jack flashed her an apologetic smile. “Sort of, yes.”

Ana sighed, purposely loud enough so Jack would not only hear it but know she meant it for him to take as a comment. 

“Overwatch is not in my hands anymore, Ana,” Jack began to explain. “There are young soldiers there now, and they are... promising. Song, Shimada, Ziegler, Correia... They are the future, I'm just an old soldier. They have everything ahead of them, whereas I already got all the chances I'm ever going to get. I want to see this one through.”

He sounded sincere, and Ana couldn't deny the ring of truth in his words. She knew they were the older generation now, and one of the best things they could do was to provide wisdom and guidance before stepping aside, but she knew better than to buy the general good will as Jack's primary motivation.  
So she gave him silence, no judgment but more than a little bit of expectation. This was a personal matter, and one name had gone unspoken for too long. 

After a minute Jack gave in. He sighed and rubbed his eyes, then the long scars cutting across his face. “I miss him so much, Ana,” he confessed quietly. “I've been thinking about him every day for the past six years, but back then it was just how things were, like a chronic pain. I got used to it and accepted the fact that I'd miss him until the day I die, but now...” he took a shuddering breath, “now that I know he's out there it's so much worse. I grieved him and that was okay, it was all that I could do and I knew that, but to know that he's still here, in the same world as I and I could just go to him... It's unbearable. I can't take it.” 

Ana couldn't think of any argument she could make against that. Deep down she had known all along that this was the truth, this was the core of the issue, but to hear it spoken out loud was still hard. It made it real and undeniable. 

“You see, that is why this is not a suicide mission,” Jack continued. “I don't want to die. I just want to speak with him again.”

Ana felt tired. She passed the tea cup into her left hand so she could rub her eye with the right. “Alright, then,” she finally said.

Jack raised a brow at her. “Alright what?”

Ana clicked her tongue at him and his useless question. “Alright I'll help you. That's what snipers are for, correct? I'll watch your back and give you a second eye somewhere high and back, cover fire and whatever you need from the distance. You can count me in.”

Jack gave her a rather painful but thoroughly grateful smile. “Thank you, Ana.”

Ana rolled her eye and huffed. “Save the thanks for after the mission. Now, fill me in.” 

Jack nodded and got right into it. He clicked open a file on the computer, then dug into one of the desk drawers and pulled out a slightly crumbled poster that turned out to be a map with dog-eared upper corners and tape and pins attached to it. “I found a base,” he said, finding a pin in the center of the taped lines, tapping it. “It's private property listed under a corporation that technically exists but has no office, no business revenue and only a few major contacts, some of which lead to dead ends. It's a former research center of a mining company that went out of business over twenty years ago, and all the evidence that I have gathered points that this is a Talon lab. And not only a lab, but a storage of sorts.”

Ana leaned in to inspect the map more closely, noted the location and the names, then checked what Jack had put up on the viewing screen. “May I use the mouse?” she asked though she was already doing it, moving the windows and scrolling through the longer ones, and Jack replied by pulling his chair back a little to give her more space. The names and dates checked out, and Ana huffed to herself how clumsily Talon had covered up their base; they had gotten a little arrogant after Overwatch's fall, she noted. Perhaps the lack of internet connection and any communications more complex than the radio had given them the false sense of security. No hacker – human, omnic or AI – could find or breach this base, but a good old-fashioned soldier could just walk in. 

“It's isolated and on high ground,” Ana noted. “I like that. I can get a nice view over the entirety of the premises. We don't have to worry about collateral damage or attracting unnecessary attention either.”

“That's excellent,” Jack agreed. “If we plan this right I think I can get inside relatively easily too. The tech level is very low there, and I only need a key card to get around there. If they have set up an internal system of their own it'll take me longer, but then again that's not a headquarters or even a base, just a regular laboratory that is trying to go unnoticed.”

“Also it's not like a locked door would hold you back,” Ana chuckled. Even from beyond a figurative grave Gabriel was still making Jack bring on his best game, for better or worse. 

“The only thing I'm really worried about are the sub-surface levels,” Jack said.

“Specify, please.” 

“I checked the blueprints of the base and found three levels below the surface. They are marked as either storage spaces or processing centers, and the actual laboratories are above the surface, but I have a feeling that anything as incriminating as their super-soldier agents are kept well out of sight.” 

Ana nodded, humming in thought. “That sounds like a reasonable theory. They must be aware of how low-level their security is, so we could reasonably assume that they have taken all the practical precautions available. Talon did have us running in circles, so we should prepare for everything.” In a moment she found the prints of the base Jack had mentioned, and linked to it the version Jack had made his own written notes as well. Ana glanced through them, finding them to be mostly planned routes in and about the faculty plus highlights on every exit. She would do her own notes on the surroundings later. 

“So,” she said then, “what's your plan of action here?”

Jack didn't hesitate for a moment: “Cut off the communications, break in, neutralize everyone I come across, extract Reyes in one way or another even if I have to hit him over the head and carry him over my shoulder, get out and level the place. Then leave by a car on the mountain roads and just drive. You can find your own way back.”

Ana felt something cold twisting in her chest while Jack presented his rather rough-edged plan. He didn't plan to take but one prisoner, and that was a tactic the Jack Ana had known would have never favored. Still, she agreed on it.

She glanced at the map on the desk again and chuckled joylessly. “It looks like we're going back to Switzerland, then.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ana is a big sister to her friends, you can't convince me otherwise!
> 
> Thank you for reading! If you liked this, you can give me kudos. If you want to give me feedback of any kind or just express anything at all, comments are always welcome!


	4. Night ride

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, dear readers! Thank you for all your kudos and comments as well as for the likes and reblogs on tumblr, they mean a lot to me. 
> 
> Here's the fourth chapter. Stars are crossing again.

Gabriel Reyes was ten years old and he was ill. 

He wasn't sure exactly what this was, but it definitely wasn't the regular flu or a simple stomach virus, and what he was fairly sure about was that he was dying. 

He felt feverish and weak, dizzy and nauseous, and all he could do was to lie in his bed shivering and whining. He tried to put up a tough front for the sake of his pride, but he was sore all over and covered in cold sweat that made his bed sheets damp and uncomfortable and he just couldn't gather the strength to fight the little whimpers every time he tried to move. There was nothing he could do, and nothing eased his torment either. His head ached and he shivered in cold and hunger while simultaneously sweating and gagging at the mere thought of food, and he had to admit he was little scared by now. 

Abuela hadn't been too worried or taken him to see a doctor after she had measured his temperature in the morning so she must have known it wasn't serious, but Gabriel couldn't totally shake the thought that he was going to die from this. He had read about freaky diseases and knew that sometimes people got terminally ill without realizing it, and then they just dropped dead on their feet to the total surprise of everyone around them. 

What if his internal organs were bleeding and that was what the pain was about? What if something had gotten infected, or there was some tropical parasite living in his gut, laying eggs and munching on his organs? He certainly could feel his skin crawling and an itch underneath it now that he thought about it.

Or what if he had contracted some sort of a virus that was super rare and that was why Abuela didn't think what he had was anything serious? He might have some sort of a brain fever or something and Abuela didn't even know it, and here he just lay slowly dying. The thought was scary, and he pressed his face into his pillow to stop himself from crying. He was already on the brink of tears out of frustration because he just couldn't get comfortable, he was either too hot or too cold, his eyes hurt when he looked into light, his skin was sore and all this made everything else except laying still unbearable. Gabriel sniffled, curling up into a ball and hoped the pain would stop.

The door to his room opened and Abuela came in. “Alright, let's check you over again,” she said. She was carrying a tray which she set down on the nightstand before taking a seat on the edge of Gabriel's bed. “How are you feeling?”

Gabriel mumbled and whined into his pillow.

Abuela snapped her fingers. “Don't you give me attitude,” she scolded gently. “C'mon, sit up, Gabi. Let me check on you.”

Gabriel groaned and whined but did as he was told, and with some difficulty due to his dizziness pushed himself upright. Abuela took a healthmeter – a small household tech device for tracking basic bodily functions – out of the pocket of her shirt and measured Gabriel's temperature, heart rate and blood pressure. She checked both his eyes, looked into his throat and made him squeeze her hands with both of his, and she wrote her findings down in a little notebook she carried in her pocket everywhere. 

Finally, when all the tests were done and her notes finished, she flipped the notebook shut and gave him a definite nod. “All seems to be as fine as it can be for a sick little boy, and this is the professional opinion of nurse Reyes.” 

Gabriel was too drained to appreciate her attempt to cheer him up, but he did quirk a small, brave smile just for her sake. She smiled back and put her hand against Gabriel's cheek, and Gabriel nuzzled weakly against her dry, warm hand, taking any comfort he could find. 

“How are you feeling?” she asked again. 

Gabriel groaned again, but persuaded by Abuela's gentle stroking of his cheek answered: “It hurts. Everything hurts. My sheets hurt, light hurts, my head hurts. Please make it stop, I just want to sleep. Make it stop, Abuela.”

“Well, at least you're not faking it,” Abuela sighed and let her hand drop. She reached for the tray she had carried with her and picked up a vial of pills, a small box in which was a jigsaw puzzle and a tall glass of orange juice. “Drink this. You need to drink more, and here, take three of these for now. If you get bored start up on the puzzle, okay? We'll complete it together later when I'll check for any changes in your condition.”

Gabriel took the pills gratefully, but the glass was too heavy in his trembling hands, so Abuela helped him drink it before tucking him back in. She must have seen the amount of pain and distress he was in, because she stayed with him for a while, stroked his hair and hummed an old Mexican lullaby. “The pain will be gone soon, Gabi, I promise. You just need to get some rest.”

*

The news feed was a never-ending torment and an unwanted trip down the memory lane. If it wasn't absolutely necessary to pick apart and analyze every piece of media where the opposing parties expressed their views about Overwatch in case of even the slightest crumbs of new information, Reaper would have skipped it. He was so deep in blogs, social media trails, newspaper articles, actual research papers and police and army reports written in only passably translated English that he was actually relieved when the alarm was sounded. 

The flare of the siren and the flashing red lights snapped him out of the deep flow he had sunken in and he sat up on his place a bit more, his hands stilling over the jigsaw puzzle he had been absentmindedly putting together while he researched. The picture of a deep blue view of a beach at night was almost complete, but now in a second completely forgotten. He glanced through the tinted glass window on the corridor-side wall of his room and watched the shadows of agents rushing in one direction and scientists and analysts in lab-coats escaping into another. 

Reaper had a hunch that bordered on a wish about what the sudden commotion could be about, and suddenly he didn't feel drowsy at all. It had been barely a month since he had shamelessly taunted Morrison for the second time because the damned mangy mutt hadn't apparently gotten it the first time, and now there were explosions and gun-fire? Even if the old man's brain had slowed down even more, his battle-prowess was like it used to be, maybe even more prominent since he had given up the filter of laws and needless ethical questions that had held him back before. 

Reaper could tell the whole base was in disarray just by listening to the noises. The noise wasn't confined to one spot either, but was definitely advancing and coming closer. The corridors echoed with gunfire, screams, cries and the occasional small explosion that was either from a helix rocket or a plastic explosive, perhaps both. Yes, it had to be Morrison, it just had to be. No one else would be this precise and this desperate to invade this humble little research center, and no on else would invade it with this brutal level of force. Reaper was almost excited. 

He wasn't wearing his full gear, so he got up and dressed properly. He had his mask on as always, most of the body armour and the boots as well, so he threw on the leather coat, fastened all the belts properly and pulled on his taloned gauntlets. He finished by pushing his shotguns into their holsters by his thighs, then sat back down on his place again to wait.

The noise was now definitely coming from at least the upper sub-surface level since the pipes hadn't carried the blast noises that well just a minute ago. Reaper glanced down at the unfinished puzzle that he would take apart again and put back into its box anyway, and after a moment of consideration abandoned it, turning towards the only door to his room.

He glanced around his room, somehow having a feeling that it would be destroyed soon, and took it in with the sense of something akin to wistfulness. Its yellow walls, the little table that had empty med vials and snack wrappers on it, his computer station, the bare light-bulb hanging from the low ceiling, his single bed and the slowly dancing and turning mobile of notes and pictures right above it. It was time to move on.

The door was kicked open, and Reaper found himself staring at a muzzle of a pulse-rifle aimed right in his face, and the man holding it there was the one he had been waiting for. Soldier 76 was a fittingly generic name for Morrison, and Reaper had to admit it carried on into practice as there was nothing that really stood out. He was just a man in a biker jacket and an air-filter mask, with gray hair and a receded hairline.  
Reaper looked back at the man's red visor and hopefully into the eyes under that.

“Well hello, the undertaker is in. Would you like to be measured for a coffin now or will I do that after you're dead?” Reaper said with a chuckle at his own joke. 

Morrison wasn't amused. “You're coming with me,” he stated, and with that spun the pulse-rifle around in his hands and slammed its butt right into Reaper's face. 

Reaper saw a flash of white and then stars, groaning when the nausea slammed over him and distantly registered himself tipping over and falling off the chair and onto the floor. That was unexpectedly crude and he was surprised, he had to admit that much. For a moment he was sure he could feel his brain turning into jelly inside his skull but he credited the nausea for that. He struggled to find and activate his limbs and pull them to support himself so he could get up, but the second he thought he had his upper body supported on his hands, a boot pushed him firmly on the shoulder and he fell on his side again. 

“Stay down,” Morrison barked at him, and even though his vision was still predominantly stars Reaper saw the other man getting down on his knees next to him and reaching inside a duffel bag slung over his shoulder that he hadn't noticed before. “You're coming with me, whether you like it or not,” Morrison said, yanked out the iv needle in the crook of his arm and threw it aside, picked up his own equipment and in a matter of seconds had Reaper's hands bound together with three zip ties. 

Reaper peered at his suddenly tied hands and flexed his talons. “When I said I'd like you to be more spontaneous this wasn't what I had in mind.”

“Shut up,” Morrison answered. Now he was holding a roll of duct tape, which he applied on top of the zip ties, then used it to tie his elbows together as well, grabbed him by the coat collar, hoisted him up and put duct tape around his torso, efficiently tying Reaper's upper arms against his sides. 

“Well this is certainly over-doing it a bit, don't you think?” Reaper scoffed as the other worked. 

This time Morrison didn't even bother with telling him to shut it. He packed his duffel bag, took Reaper firmly around the knees and threw him over his shoulder, picked up his pulse-rifle with his free hand and out of the door they went. 

“No time for chitchat yet, there's a fire. I lit the place up before I came down here,” Morrison said as if that was a good reason to slam a rifle in someone's face, wrap them in duct tape and carry them away. Not that Reaper had expected tact from Morrison, but this was seriously disappointing: this setting didn't have the makings of a fight to the death. He still felt a little woozy after the blow to the face and wondered in passing if Morrison had hit him hard enough to crack his skull and that was what was making him feel this slow. 

Even though his usual heavy equipment was now accompanied with a man of his own size Morrison didn't seem to be slowed down by his charge, and he practically flew down the corridor and up the stairs. 

It seemed that he had all but demolished the base on his way in. There were bodies lying everywhere, doors blasted off their hinges, explosion marks and bullet holes everywhere, and on top of that the base was on fire. The alarm siren was still blaring and the lights were flashing, but the base was unnaturally void of all human-made sound.

When they reached the surface level they were greeted by thick black smoke that hit them as soon as the main door was opened, and the bitter, toxic smell of chemicals burning was just as obvious. The sprinkler system had gone off, and the corridors and laboratories Morrison ran through were a bizarre combination of fire and rain inside, and the way was decorated by bodies here and there, in piles and in rows, dropped wherever they had gotten in Morrison's way. 

Reaper felt something heavy and sweet like satisfaction settling in his gut as he beheld Morrison's handiwork. The corridors and laboratories they passed were familiar to him, but they had always been brightly lit, organized and sterile. Every operating theater, chemistry lab, interrogation room and test chamber had been clean and in perfect order, but now they were lit in flashes of red, bathed in fire and blood, and full of bodies. Morrison had shot to kill every time, and Reaper absolutely adored that. He was overjoyed by every splatter and stain on the walls, the lakes of blood on the floors, and how everything that had been so clean and proper was now going out in a fire. 

Whatever was left of the personnel of the base was outside, and Reaper fully expected a final firefight here, but instead what he saw off Morrison's shoulder was perhaps a handful of agents running like a flock of chickens across the yard and getting picked out one by one. First it was hard to tell because of the roaring of the fire and how it slammed through the windows behind them, but every time someone got hit and fell there was a distant gun shot. 

“You brought Ana,” Reaper grumbled, feeling a rush of bitterness towards the woman and maybe a bit of disappointment that Morrison wasn't alone.

“Damn right I did,” Morrison replied, sprinting across the yard towards the road. His destination was a car, an old yet well-kept off-road vehicle, and he opened the door to the passenger's side, dumped Reaper on the seat, slammed the door shut and rushed to the driver's side himself. 

Morrison started the car, tossed his duffel bag and pulse-rifle in the backseat and fumbled at the gear shift all at the same time. He angled the car towards the uphill of the mountain, flashed the lights three times and waited. Somewhere among the trees a flashlight blinked three times, and Morrison sighed in relief before slamming on the gas pedal. 

Reaper flexed his talons and tested his bounds. It wouldn't take him even a minute to rip them to shreds, but for now he turned to stare at the side of Morrison's face even though it was infuriatingly obscured by his mask and visor. 

Morrison must have felt the stare, because he clearly glanced back at him while wheeling the car on to the mountain road and away from the remains of the base and even further from the city down below. “I want to talk,” he said. 

Laughter rose in Reaper's throat and he let it out, cold and raspy and almost painful after all the smoke he had breathed in. “You want to talk? That's it? You track me and level a Talon base to drag me out of my safe-house just to talk?” he said through his laughter. Suddenly he cut the laugh and turned serious again: “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Morrison tilted his head towards him for a moment, probably glancing at him. “I honestly don't know, probably a whole lot since I went through all that just to get you here,” he replied. 

Reaper raised his bound hands a bit, wiggling his fingers. “Do you think this will hold me for long?”

Jack scoffed. “It'll probably keep you only a few seconds, but I needed you to not struggle while I got us out of there.”

Reaper snorted at him and started to fight against the tape and the zip ties. The tape groaned, twisted and wore out when he put his full strength to it, focusing first at getting his arms free before moving on to his joints. The tape stretched white and started to give out fast.

Morrison was definitely breaking the speed-limit while he drove, and though his gaze was mostly on the road ahead he kept tabs on Reaper's process of freeing himself, hopefully worried for his safety. If the car crashed Reaper knew he was going to make it, but about Morrison he was not so sure.

“You have a lot of nerve to show up like this,” Reaper said while tearing at his ties.

“Yeah, I know, I just had to... be sure,” Morrison said, a bit uncertain. 

Uncertainty was a tone Reaper hadn't heard in a long, long time, and the blurry memories that tone awoke belonged to Gabriel Reyes. He forced his identity to stretch and accept the thoughts as his own. Under his mask he grinned, feeling the scars around his mouth pulling tight. “You were always a bit on the slow side, Boy Scout,” he chuckled. “I can't believe it took me two tries to actually make this sink in. I'm hurt, even.” 

Morrison rolled his shoulders and kept staring at the road ahead. “Ana wouldn't bring it up. She saw your face, I didn't, but we never... Discussed the Egypt incident. We don't talk about the past that much either.” 

Reaper had to laugh at that. “Feeling a bit guilty, huh? I'd love to tell 'I told you so' to her as well. Eventually I will, when I hunt her down and kill her.”

Morrison glanced at him again. “A bit blood-thirsty there. I thought that was a vampire-thing,” he said and nodded at his hooded coat and the mask with a snort.

“Don't you fucking dare to make fun of me,” Reaper growled. The zip ties around his wrists snapped, and he tore off the remains of the tape. “You keep your fucking mouth shut when you don't know a goddamn thing about me. And you can bet your skinny ass I'm out for blood, don't tell me you haven't seen my work, I know you have.”

“I've seen your work alright,” Morrison admitted. “I spotted something of a theme there as well. Working through a list?”

“Yes, and a long list too,” Reaper replied. There was no danger in confirming that. It wasn't like Morrison or the scraps of Overwatch could stop him. 

“Overwatch agents and politicians? Really?” Morrison pressed.

Reaper was quickly becoming bored of the subject, and that was quick since they hadn't been talking for much longer than minutes. “You've seen it, you heard me, that's it. Is that why you searched me out? To ask about what's happening in my professional life nowadays, Morrison?”

The use of the last name was purposefully keeping the other man at arms-length and it was very obvious, but Morrison visibly winced at it anyway. It was a nice little extra, and Reaper felt satisfaction slithering in his gut at the sight. He slumped down on his seat to get comfortable, regarded the other man carefully and really let it sink in that this was indeed Jack Morrison, alive and in the flesh, right here and so close. A dull ache of hatred and grudge woke in his chest, and the small confined place of the car and the very real possibility of a kill tonight made him feel almost hungry. 

Morrison huffed a sigh into is mask, and the sound came out funny through the filters. “No, that's not why I... That's not it,” he said, swallowed and hesitated. Glanced at the other again. The red light the visor gave out was almost the only light source in the car aside from the meters glowing greenish on the board, and Reaper had to focus to make out any kind of expression on Morrison's face. 

“I just... I had to see you,” Morrison said, almost blurted. “I had to see for myself.”

If the hate had been dull like a slightly elevated pulse, now it flared up like a flame with gasoline poured into it. In a moment Reaper became aware of the mask that was just a mask, and the burn scars, cuts and exposed flesh on his face started to itch like mad. He ground his teeth and chewed on the insides of his cheeks, tasting metal. “You came to behold me and what I have become? Then go ahead and take a long look, although I'm afraid I'd have to kill something to really show you what I am today.”

“ _What_ you are?” Morrison repeated, doubt evident even under his regular interrogative tone. “Reyes, I'm pretty sure you're still a human no matter how your life-support functions.” 

“Oh you have no idea,” Reaper said, stretching out each word, basking in his own monstrosity and how absolute his state was. The mask felt like it merged with his flesh once again. “You have no idea what's become of me, Morrison. You don't have the faintest clue what I went through, what I endured, and how I have transformed.”

Morrison was clearly frowning, the lines on his forehead deep and his brows almost drawn together. “Then tell me. You clearly want to, so tell me what happened,” he said, and his overtly patient tone infuriated Reaper even more; Morrison was not about to get to be the condescending party here. 

“Oh I'll tell you,” Reaper promised, “I'll tell you, and then I'll show you. Not like I showed Ana, either, something special just for you.”

Morrison was quiet, still frowning.

“You're the number one on my list, Morrison,” Reaper crooned, “you're the one I want the most. Overwatch tossed me aside and left me behind, Ziegler's human experimentation and SEP turned me into this thing, but you wasn't just a part of all that, _you_ are the one who sucked the light out of my life.”

Morrison didn't answer, but Reaper could both see and hear him swallow. The hunger intensified. 

“You picked up death tonight, Morrison,” Reaper said with a grin, “and you will not leave this car alive.”


	5. All the wrong turns

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello dear readers! Thank you all for kudos and comments you have left, they mean the world to me and I will get to responses soon.
> 
> I've just returned from my parents' summer cottage, and I'm really eager to update this fic. I like this chapter a lot myself since I got to write a lot of stuff I like and use some fun stylistic stuff in the text. Also hopefully you enjoy a taste of retro in this one since I make little throw backs into song fics. How many remembers those? 
> 
> A friendly reminder that there's an actual playlist for this fic [here](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGaTZCX7RVn7imygkIgCkdeU8GPk0VVBD).

There was absolutely no one else driving on the mountain roads tonight, and Reaper reckoned that was good since with Morrison's driving they would have crashed into someone by now. Morrison was speeding, pedal on the floor, his shoulders tense and both hands gripping the wheel. 

Reaper would have bet money that Morrison was already regretting his choice to seek him out by now, and if Reaper had still believed in God he would have thanked Him for the sweetness that was Morrison's slowly increasing agony. On one hand it was like balm on the stinging wounds the other had left behind and he wanted to savor it, but on the other it fueled his thirst for blood. In the end blood was what he wanted to spill, nothing less would do, nothing less would set him free. Behind his mask he gritted his teeth so hard his jaw ached, but at the same time he grinned in delight.

He would be patient, he would wait for this. He would carefully, surgically bleed every bit of pain out of Morrison down to the last drop he had to give, and then he would snuff out the life in him. 

Yes, that was the thought Reaper wanted to hold on to for now. The thought of the end-game kept him calm and let him enjoy the wait so he slumped down on his seat, relaxed and leaned his head against the window. 

“I must admit that this is a good look on you, Morrison. I always thought the soldier was your true form, not that passive paper-pusher they made you into,” he noted off-handedly. 

“This is nothing like back then,” Morrison growled in response.

Reaper's grin widened, safely hidden behind the mask. He knew that tone, and it told him Morrison was putting his defenses up before a threat. “I agree. You were never this direct, never this bold. But I think someone like me can relate: Cutting yourself loose from the chain of command is very liberating, isn't it?”

Morrison glared at him, Reaper could tell even with the mask and the visor. “I'm nothing like you. You're... you're a mercenary. A terrorist.” 

Rejection hurt more than he had anticipated, and again it forced Reaper to remember that he had had a name and a life before his death. He hated it. “Trampling on me already? That's not very nice of you,” he hissed. “Although that's not entirely unexpected. You were always quick to rank things according to your... ethics.”

“This is not about my ethics. I'm aware of what I'm doing,” Morrison snapped.

“Oh, are you now?”

“I'm not like you, and I'm not like I was before. I am a soldier, but I was never like this when I served. It's not the same and I'm not saying it is,” Morrison said, looking ahead on the road. “There's a fight to be fought, and I won't quit before I die.”

“Well ain't that big of you,” Reaper mocked. “Don't act all innocent, you leave behind collateral damage in piles too!”

“I know that, and I don't care,” Morrison said – a new interesting point of view for him – “But at least I decide where I aim my gun. No one else calls the shots in my life but me.”

“Are you trying to bother me about Talon?” Reaper asked, and now he laughed openly. “Talon is just one job. I use them until I grow bored! Right now they have the same names on their list as I have on mine, so it works.”

“Is that so?” Morrison asked, clearly sarcastic in his infuriating morally superior manner. 

“Don't take that tone with me,” Reaper spat. “You don't know a thing about me anymore. You haven't known me in a long, long time, and that was your choice. You don't get to make the rules here!”

Morrison looked tense and pained, Reaper could tell just by the line of his shoulders and how every now and then he loosed the death grip he had on the wheel and combed his hand through his thinning hair. God, he looked old, all gray and mangy and forehead full of lines that didn't smooth out anymore. Reaper wanted to reach over and rip the stupid mask off so he could see it all. Morrison probably had snow-white stubble shaved carelessly in a hurry, lines around his mouth and eyes that weren't so bright blue anymore. He looked like the passage of time personified, the inevitable and cruel punishment reserved for all living things. 

“I didn't seek you out to lecture you,” Morrison snapped in frustration. “I want answers. I – I tried to look for you, in the rubble. I tried, and I didn't find you. I thought someone else did since you got a funeral and... No one said it was just a casket, so I thought there must have been a body...” he trailed off, hopefully because he realized how stupid he sounded. As if it would have been announced that Commander Reyes had gone missing. As if that kind of uncertainty could have been tolerated – it had already been too much that the Strike-Commander Morrison hadn't been recovered from the ruins, but luckily that ended up just turning him into a martyr in the public eye, almost like a saint who had vanished and stepped into the bright light of eternity. 

“You didn't even want to find me,” Reaper accused and felt a sting. He was slipping. The memory belonged to someone else, someone who had been transformed beyond humanity but still had a voice. 

“Of course I didn't!” Morrison said, exasperated. “I didn't want to find you dead! That was my worst nightmare since the first day on the field!”

“Oh?” Reaper whispered. Learning this felt like biting into a juicy fruit. “Am I that precious to you, Morrison? Well aren't you just a goddamn darling.”

The other winced and tried to cover it with a roll of his shoulder. A loose joint cracked. 

“Well you should have showed that a bit more, don't you think? Even now I can admit that we were something else in service, when we fought and led together we could conquer just about anything. If it had stayed like that we could have become unstoppable!” Reaper said, his voice growing rough and bitter. The more he thought about the time of the first Omnic Crisis, the boot camp, army grays and the missions when he had been a young man, the more the mask on his face started to feel like a mask again. He was a man, he had a name. 

Morrison combed his fingers through his hair anxiously, his hand occasionally squeezing into a fist and pulling at it. “Nothing lasts forever. The war came to an end, and there were other things to do. We _both_ wanted to move on, I recall very clearly! We wanted to see more, to learn more, it wasn't just me or you or... We evolved. We became better. We couldn't have stayed as soldiers forever, you know that.”

“Hmm, well I don't know, it seems that you feel pretty nostalgic about those days,” Reaper noted, nodding towards Morrison and gesturing vaguely at the back-seat where the pulse-rifle and the very military-grade duffel lay abandoned. “Soldier 76. That's what you call yourself these days, right? How humble of you, I must say. I had my doubts about your identity for a long time since I was sure you would have picked something pompous and ridiculous, like Captain something.”

“Soldier is simple. I don't need any extra attention. I'm not a part of a command chain anymore, so it just makes sense. Back into square one,” Morrison said through his teeth. 

Reaper scoffed and raised a brow even though his mask remained as expressionless as always. “You miss it. Just admit it, this 'loose cannon' thing is even more fun than when we were in the army. Don't you just love a good fight, a rough, bloody battle with a clear purpose, and now you don't even have to report it to anyone and explain the reasoning behind your every step?”

If a posture could radiate discomfort, Morrison currently had that. Reaper smelled blood in the water and his smile grew into a grin.

“You love it,” he accused. “No wonder you'd like to draw a line between you and me as you clearly are the type to be in denial. But the truth is that we are exactly alike, we are both after the rush, the satisfaction, the meaning of life that lies in battles, and you just don't want to admit it.”

“You really love the sound of your own voice, huh,” Morrison snapped back at him. “Do you think you sound like a super-villain or were you always secretly into slam poetry or something?”

Reaper had to laugh at that, it was such a clumsy defensive move on Morrison's part. “Well didn't I always bring out the superhero in you?”

Morrison didn't comment, but both of his hands were on the wheel again and he stared pointedly ahead. 

Reaper basked in the pain he had caused. The longer he stared at the side of Morrison's face, the brighter the flame of bitter hate in his chest burned, and it also cleared his head and thoughts about him. But with the clarity came the pain that had laid dormant all day. He had concentrated on research and the jigsaw puzzle he somehow knew he wouldn't get to complete and the pain had been out of his mind, but now it was tightening its hold on him again, like a bird of prey with iron talons sinking slowly all the way to the bone. 

“I tracked you down when you were dealing with the Los Muertos in Mexico, you know,” Reaper said. “One gang is pretty far from the glory of suffocating an uprising or going up against an army, don't you think? Seeing you crawl through the scum of the Earth was quite pleasing though, maybe you really are a war dog nowadays.”

Morrison didn't say anything back to him, just stared at the road. 

“Maybe you should have retired from the army straight to the civilian life after all,” Reaper continued, paying no mind to his audience playing deaf. “It fits you so well! Leaving behind all the purpose and glory and revolting back into a busy little bug who runs meaningless errands and complains about nonsense. It just plays by the rules and does everything it's told, buys a house and gets a couple of kids just because everyone else is doing that too and because their parents won't stop bothering them... A nice little crowd-pleaser you could have been.”

Morrison was either in pain or angry or both since the vents of his mask were huffing and coughing, and Reaper guessed it was his harsh breathing being filtered. 

“Is that why you made this so damn personal? Because I didn't buy a house with you?” Morrison snapped.

A cold cackle forced its way out of Reaper's throat, deep and raspy. “You assume we were getting there?” he asked with a voice trembling with mocking laughter. “You didn't give me anything! Only empty promises and wayward dreams, nothing else! All I got from you were a job and garbage to haul!” 

Silence followed. The engine of the car seemed suddenly very loud. Dampers turned its roar into a hum but it still carried through the metal and inside the chassis and reminded them of the job it was doing, an old-fashioned diesel engine taking them further and further away. 

The road followed the mountain side along its curves and ups and downs. It was small but still big enough to have two lanes, and every second streetlight was lit and threw orange beams of light on the road. They drove through darkness, then a spotlight, darkness and spotlight again and again. 

They came into a crossroads, and Morrison hesitated for a moment. The direction signs were written in German and French and to them were all but useless, but Morrison chose anyway, turning the car towards a bridge and a wider road. 

The car radio that had only quietly buzzed until now finally picked up a signal and started to play music, something with a strong bass and a synthesizer. “ _We're watching the world pass us by, never want to come down,_ ” someone sang in the middle of the song. 

To Reaper Morrison was just empty words. He could spin a pretty tale but would never follow through with it, not when it came down to something personal and not something a mass of people were organized to accomplish. No real moves, no real claims on the things he wanted, not even truly going through with basic promises and duties he so claimed he'd do as a friend or as a partner. Sure, he was an efficient soldier, but he didn't make sacrifices or prioritize over his work, and he certainly didn't work to prove his claims that they were a family.

The only joint mundane investment that took any amount of preparations Morrison ever went through with Reyes was to buy a shared transportation vehicle, and even now when Reaper tried to recall any details about it he came up with a black void and a headache. 

“You should have never taken the command of Overwatch,” Reaper said. 

“So that is what your vengeance is about?” Morrison asked, “the command? Still, after all this time?”

“It fell on your watch!” Reaper yelled. His scars itched and ached under his mask. “You left us exposed and vulnerable! Your command cost us countless missions, countless agents, countless civilian lives, all because you hesitated! You stayed there in the spotlight, tied down by the UN and just about every single politician who so much as uttered a complaint or a doubt about Overwatch! You forgot who you were, you forgot you were a soldier and you let _them_ mold you into a bureaucratic explanation machine! Overwatch ended the Omnic Crisis because we didn't waste our time by filling out report forms, we acted! We went out there and fought, cleared the path and ground for the innocent and didn't worry about who's gonna clean up or who gets to smile to the camera and shake someone's hand!”

Morrison was shaking his head and his hand brushed the mask, like he wanted to rub his face but forgot the mask was in the way. “No, no... I mean, I know I was in command then, trust me I know, but we had to be transparent! The international community or the civilian masses wouldn't tolerate a mystery organization filled with weaponry and dangerous people. It _had to_ be in the open and official.”

Reaper snorted. “And yet, you needed me and my Blackwatch.” 

Only the sounds from the radio and the engine humming filled the car. The streetlights had turned brighter and the road slightly wider, and it looked like they were driving across a valley. “ _The light that shines around you, it blinds my eyes,_ ” sang a woman over a plugging guitar. Reaper hated the song and wished Morrison would fight back so their voices could drown the boring tune out. 

“So you think I was a bad commander,” Morrison said. “You think that I ruined Overwatch. If you really think that, then why haven't you come for me sooner? If everything is my fault, then why bother with the politicians, old generals, or the tech support? The damn tech support, too? What did they ever do to you?!” He sounded desperate and like he was barely holding it together. He sounded like he was at his limit, driven from the safe shallows into deep waters. 

And to think that he had been the one who came for Reaper, not vice versa. It was very fitting, almost poetic.

“Overwatch was a mistake,” Reaper growled. “It shouldn't have ever come to be! We should have just ended the crisis and disbanded right then and there, go back to our regular service, finish it and move on. It shouldn't have ever become as big or as powerful as it did.”

They came to a y-crossing, and Morrison chose a direction without even glancing at the signs, just picked a turn and took them once again onto a smaller road that led slightly downwards. 

Morrison threw several glances at Reaper and made a few stuttering sounds. He was grasping at the information, struggling to understand and failing. “You never said any of that back then. Nothing like that,” he finally managed to force out.

Reaper scoffed and rolled his eyes. Denial it was then, once again. “And you think I would have talked to you about anything in the end? You drove me further and further into the background! Think about it, seven years ago, how often did we really talk to each other? Alone, without any pressing crisis at hand? Truly _talked_?” He paused and let Morrison remember the same thing as he did, that they really hadn't. They might have been on speaking terms, but that was useless since they never happened into each other's company. The cold shoulder received back then still enraged Reaper. It made him remember just how far down in Morrison's priorities he had fallen. “Now, how could have _you_ possibly known in that situation what I thought or felt? About anything?” he demanded, his voice just a bitter hiss through his teeth. 

Morrison's hand was on his forehead again, rubbing at his brows and temples almost violently. He shifted on his seat restlessly and was silent, and Reaper knew the other knew he was right. People around them could recall and flaunt their glory days all they wanted, and they did too. Reaper had read probably most of the think-pieces and eulogies ever written about Morrison, and they all focused on the Golden Boy, the valiant Strike-Commander, the young war hero, and always ended up sounding like they were crafting poems about the statue and not the man himself. Gabriel Reyes recalled a graying man who had the worries of the world on his shoulders, a caffeine addiction and problems with insomnia. A man who was slowly slipping away from him. 

No, that wasn't right. Not slipping away, being taken away. The settled bitterness flared up in flames again when he remembered what it had really been like. Transparency, responsibility... All any of that ever accomplished was turning them into available scapegoats. Heroes were nothing more than blank slates for the masses and the elites to project their dreams and ideals on, and when they inevitably failed as mortals tend to do, heroes were to give the public the blood they demanded.

“I don't... I don't know what to say... I don't know what you want me to tell you,” Morrison confessed in a rushed, pained sigh. 

Reaper had to laugh at that. “I don't want you to tell me anything. I don't _need_ you to tell me anything, I already see clearly enough. What I actually want is to you never utter a single word again, I want your throat slit and your blood spilled onto the ground.” 

Morrison sighed, and the vents echoed with it. Even the sigh sounded rough, like he had eaten sand. He didn't only sound old, he sounded sick. Reaper wrinkled his nose at that. 

“So you're really gonna kill me then?” Morrison asked softly, exhausted. 

Reaper rolled his eyes. “You're my number one, Morrison. Of course I will kill you. What do you think has gotten me through my crippled life until this point?”

Morrison let his head fall back against the headrest of his seat, and the vents puffed again. “If you kill me, will you leave the rest alone?”

A harsh laugh was ripped out of Reaper's sore throat and it even surprised himself; This was too funny, too priceless. Morrison still had the remains of the golden boy in him. “Of course not! I will kill all and every one I can get my hands on, and let me say, working in Blackwatch for so long taught me everything I need to know to do just that.”

Morrison turned to look at him for a longer time than he had before, like he was really taking in Reaper and his whole being, really studying his looks and perhaps trying to see something there. 

“What happened to you?” he asked then, sounding like he was choking, as Reaper gleefully noted. 

Reaper grinned even though Morrison couldn't see it. “I've been transformed. Overwatch tore my life from me, you let me down and together all of you left me behind to become whatever this is. But it's okay, I'll make use of it. I have been transformed from the powerless, obedient man I used to be, and now... Now I'm calling the shots. You can talk to me all you like, but you are not commanding me anymore, Morrison.”

Morrison shook his head again like he was trying to argue with just that, but his red visor hid his pretty blue eyes and he hardly was the pretty boy he used to be even under his mask so begging gestures made little difference. “I'm not trying to order you. I'm not here to... debate ethics or... rescue you from yourself or whatever the hell you think I'm here for... I just... Needed to see you and know. I... It's you, isn't it, Reyes?”

“DON'T. Don't call me that,” Reaper snarled. He had to concentrate to hold his form together so he wouldn't let it flare, his flesh part from his bones and reach over to choke Morrison and cut their little game short. 

He forced himself to calm down and continue the chase. Morrison was getting too honest and with that too easy a target. It seemed like he was almost completely worn down, which was peculiar because what Reaper had previously seen indicated that Morrison still had all the fight in him, but now he was practically giving up just because of some talk. That didn't add up, it wasn't like Morrison at all, it was almost as if he – 

There. This was the sweetest thing Reaper had discovered yet, and he was grateful about his mask because it hid the grin that had just split his face. 

“Jack,” he crooned, purposefully invading the other's personal space with his first name, “did you come to me to die?”

No answer came, Morrison just stared ahead into the night and at the short length of the road the headlights illuminated.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoo, we might be getting somewhere! 
> 
> What did you think? Who's more on the right and what their true feelings are? What happened here? What war did to these guys? Where is all of this going? Is Jack a bad driver?? 
> 
> Thank you for reading. See you in a few days again with an update~


	6. The bite of time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, dear readers!   
> Thank you all so much for your kudos and comments. I'll be getting to replying soon. 
> 
> I really like this chapter. I made myself emotional with a certain core theme here. Someone needs to help Jack.

Pain was a great teacher, but suffering brought forth people's true nature and refined one's soul.

This was what Abuela told Gabriel in a stern manner every time he had to put up with visits to a doctor. Gabriel was almost twelve and definitely not afraid of anything, at least not needles or strangers ordering him to strip to his underwear so they could measure and weigh him and write down stuff they saw and didn't share. It felt like he was broken down into little mechanical parts and assigned a precise number that objectively told his worth. 

He definitely wasn't afraid, not at all. “It's just a routine check-up,” said Abuela while holding his hand and coaxing him to cooperate. Gabriel bit his trembling lower lip, put on a brave face and went with her and did as she instructed him.

To have Abuela there with him brought him comfort even though he didn't ever voice the thought. He glared defiantly at the doctor and nurses who ordered him around and poked him with their instruments and waved around their measuring tapes and probes, and it took Abuela to repeat their instructions with her soft and deep voice for Gabriel to follow them. 

She coaxed him to sit on the operating table, to stay still and breathe when the doctor took his vitals and relax when the nurse drew his blood. 

The syringe always looked much bigger near his arm than it did on a tray, and Gabriel just couldn't watch it pierce his skin and sink into a vein, he just couldn't, so he fastened one hand into Abuela's coat and pressed his face against her shoulder. She petted the back of his head and told him how brave and good he was, how this was necessary for his health, and how it would all be over again soon and he would get a little prize for his bravery. It was all going to be okay. 

At the age of ten Gabriel had learned he was ill. It wasn't terminal or anything, not at this day and age, but it did mean many, many trips to the hospital, sometimes staying there for days at a time, and it was tough on his family. Sure, it was tough on him too, but his family were the one to worry and feel helpless when his condition took a turn for the worse. 

Sometimes, when things got really bad for him, his family couldn't bare to even look at him and how weak and sick he got, and only Abuela had the strength to accompany him to the hospital. 

She was wise and always calm, maybe because she had been a nurse herself and as such seen all kinds of things, maybe because that was just her nature, tough and brave. At first Gabriel had felt alone and sort of abandoned by how worry and pity made his family turn away, but Abuela never did, and that made him pay no mind to the rest. It was on them, and what Gabriel could do was to be brave and get better. 

Abuela always made it better. She held his hand through the exams and various sample extractions, never flinching at the blood or spinal fluids or vomit or convulsion attacks, and afterwards when they got to leave the hospital she would hand him a small piece of candy. 

All the pain, the suffering and examinations almost felt worth it when Abuela praised him, and then he got to leave the house again and go play outside. He would beat this, and he would prove himself. He would transform from a teary-eyed, sick boy into a strong and brave man, that he swore. 

*

It was strange to Jack how things he already knew and had well internalized could still cut deep when said by someone else. He knew everything Reyes said about him, them, and Overwatch, he knew why they had failed, how they had been slowed down and held back, and he knew Overwatch was one of those things that fit the war time but didn't belong in a world that valued peace.

He knew separating them had driven a rift in the whole organization. In a way he had even cherished this, like it somehow confirmed that what they once had was real. Like their love and friendship ran so deep it was the entire foundation of something as grand as Overwatch, and when they parted they didn't just drift apart, they took everything around them down with them. If Jack had been a better man he might have felt guilty about enjoying something that had cost human lives, but he wasn't. All these years he had cradled this memory, cherished and valued it, and framed it in his mind like a tragedy in literature. It was easier to bear like that, like the hollow ache of loss had some beauty and meaning to it. 

But what he had underestimated here was how much Reyes had changed. Jack kept the visor angled towards the road, but almost in paranoid manner kept at least a quarter of its sensors angled towards Reyes. 

The other man wallowed in darkness. There was barely enough light inside the car to pick up details, and Reyes blended in the dark frighteningly well, only the passing streetlights lighting up his outline. His hood kept his face hidden and the unmoving mask did the rest. Jack's whole vision was in red, and from the deep black holes of the skull two red irises stared back at him. Without the proper light it looked like Reyes was one with the dark spots of the car, a limitless creature about to consume him. 

Reyes had the familiar snark about him, but other than that he was unrecognizable. He was angry and cruel, his every word was meant to attack and hurt Jack, and he didn't even bother covering it. The words battered him, and by every moment Jack felt himself growing more tired. 

“Jack, did you come to me to die?” Reyes asked him with a voice bordering on gleeful.

The question was stupid of course, but Jack felt his insides running cold when he found himself unable to deny it. He could have snapped back at Reyes, told him to shut up and stop being so damn ridiculous, but he was quickly running out of anger. He had ridden his fury into the Talon base and let it flame on as he shot everyone who happened on his path, and burning the whole place down on top of that had been like icing on a cake. Even carrying Reyes out from that strange room with yellow wallpaper and cozy-looking little bed on one wall and screens full of violent news images and hit lists on the other had been an act fueled by adrenaline and battle fury. Now that battery had been drained.

Jack stared ahead on the dark road, still very much aware that Reyes was expecting an answer out of him. He sighed hoping it would ease his distress, but did nothing. “No, of course I didn't. I'm not ready to die, and I'm definitely not egging you on to finish me off.”

“Huh. Could have fooled me,” Reyes said from his side. Jack saw him rolling his eyes behind the mask. 

They drove in silence for a while. Whatever the radio station was on seemed to work on automated playlist tonight since not a single commercial or host break had disrupted the music. Jack didn't know most of the songs on but the genre of light rock was to his liking, and it almost made him forget about his impending headache and the dark mass of heavy emotion that was dragging him down. 

“Is it that surprising that I'd come looking for you?” Jack asked after a moment, glancing at Reyes and trying to read his mask in vain. “I mean, it's you. Just because we didn't talk much before the fall doesn't mean I didn't care what happened to you.”

“Again, could have fooled me,” Reyes said dryly. 

Jack felt a sting in his chest. He might have been a hardened old soldier on his own personal quest, but no amount of body-armor could protect him from Reyes and his words that rang with truth. He felt weak and defenseless before the other man, and no matter how much Reyes' current look was just playing for dramatics it really did feel like the ghost of the days past was heckling him and weighing his soul. 

“Look, I really meant what I said,” Jack tried again, pushing forward like in a blizzard. “You meant... so much to me, now and back then, before everything went to hell. Even when we weren't really talking I still – “ he rubbed his own forehead, furiously trying to ease the ache and his anxiety, “I wanted to fix it.”

“There's nothing to fix!” Reyes snapped. “Whatever you're reaching for now doesn't exist anymore! I have changed in ways you couldn't even begin to _imagine_ – “

“Well I have changed too!” Jack interrupted impatiently, irritated. “I know, okay?! Do you think I'm blind?! I know things have changed, _I_ have changed! I don't even use my name anymore because the man I was died in Zürich, and I let people have their image of that man and carry on, I'm just what remains and I'm trying to right some wrongs before my age catches up with me!” 

Jack felt his palms growing clammy and cold inside his gloves; he hadn't meant to be that honest. He had promised Ana this wasn't a suicide mission, that his Soldier 76 persona wasn't just one last rampage that he fully expected to end with a lucky bullet. But, he thought bittersweetly to himself, Reyes had a tendency to bring out the purest, clearest essence of him, and now it felt less like an enchantment and more like being turned inside out with the help of a skinning knife. 

“Damn you got so old,” Reyes said, clicking his tongue. He was leaning against the side window and tapping the door with his talons. “This is a full circle for you then, from a soldier back to a soldier, although this version of you is definitely feistier than before.”

“Did you hear a word of what I just said?” Jack demanded. 

“I heard you alright,” Reyes said with an indifferent tone. “And none of your words interest me. That's all you ever were, just a man with big words and little action, and whatever your precious feelings are, I couldn't care less. Promises are useless if you don't keep them.”

Jack felt his headache getting worse, but part of it was just him wracking his brain so he'd understand what the other was really talking about. There was something between them that he sensed but couldn't catch, something that he felt like he should know. “This is... This has to be something else, it really has to,” he said. “This whole thing can't be about the Strike-Commander post! That meant nothing in the grand scheme of things!”

“Of _course_ it's not just about that!” Reyes retorted. “Did you hit your head really bad in Zürich or what's this about?! You didn't lift a finger for us in the past, and now neither one of us is the same person as back then! There is. Nothing. To fix. Get that through your thick skull, Morrison.”

Jack felt weariness sneaking upon him, the very same paralyzing weight that had kept him bed-ridden for a week, and now it raised a bitter taste in the back of his throat as well. He wasn't in a place in his life where he had much time to look back at his life and choices and wallow in them, but now it seemed he was forced to stop and do just that. 

“You're wrong,” he argued meekly, hand on his brow and his foot a bit heavier on the gas pedal. “We have changed, both of us and the world, but we're still us. We're still alive, we're still here, and what we had is a part of both of us, it's our past. Ours, no matter how much... How much whatever else is between us.”

“For such a let-down you sure have turned the memories into gold,” Reyes accused him, but instead of chilly he sounded angry again, and Jack was frightened by his own emotions again when he realized Reyes' anger made him feel relief: His words had reached the other and made him react. He had been heard, even if it just made Reyes angry.

Reyes clicked his tongue and leaned over slightly, like he wanted to shout in Jack's face. The skull mask became a little bit more focused in Jack's vision, as did the red circles behind the eyeholes. “You left me behind,” he snarled, “you knew we were good together, and still you just wandered off! You gave up on us without ever putting real work into it!”

Jack felt at loss again. He was desperate to understand, to _know_ , but Reyes might as well have been speaking to him in foreign language. “What are you talking about?!” 

“We were supposed to be together!” Reyes yelled at him. “We were at our best when we did what we were meant to do! We were meant to go to war and you know it, you were supposed to have my back, and if we had stayed like that nothing could have held us back. But instead you let politicians and world-peace groupies tear as apart and pull out the teeth of the organization we built! You abandoned who you are, and you abandoned me, Jack.”

Jack wanted nothing more than to park the car, crawl into the backseat and fall asleep and never wake up. He turned his head fully towards Reyes who was practically fuming with rage and pain whereas Jack was almost too exhausted to even feel pain. He just let the dull ache wash over him and nest inside him, it was no different from the weight of losing Reyes he had carried for the past six years, and he could go on with that. “I didn't want war to define my life,” he said. 

Reyes rumbled under his mask, probably swore, and rolled his eyes again. “Then why didn't we retire? It's not like anyone forced us to stay in Overwatch. You could have hung the jacket at any time, as could have I, and we could have left. And why didn't we, hm? Was Overwatch so damn precious to you, Jack? Even after it turned into nothing more than UN's international freak show that they paraded across the globe?!”

“I was going to retire, we talked about that, remember?” Jack said, and Christ he sounded defensive even to his own ears now.

“Yes, and like I said, you talked and talked about a lot of things,” Reyes snarled. He sounded slighted, like an army widow even though they were both in service. 

'This is only temporary', such a mundane excuse to waste away your time. Even after all the good that Overwatch had turned out to be, had they really wasted their lives away? Had Jack wasted his life? He had to admit the notion held a terrifying amount of merit, and to his horror he felt his eyes stinging like he was about to shed some tears. He wasn't even sure if his eyes could physically shed tears anymore. 

“I... I'm...” he stuttered. He wasn't really sure what he was going to say or what he wanted Reyes to hear. 

When he had laid in his bed in the Gibraltar base Jack had dreamed. He had dreamed, and when he neared consciousness he had recalled sweet memories that had mixed into his dreams. He recalled the days when they had both been young and everything was still good, new and exciting. In his memories even the basic training was now as sweet and nostalgic as a summer camp when he was a child, and he recalled how full of energy and curiosity he had been back then. 

He recalled meeting Gabriel as an intimidating senior officer, but one who without his stripes turned out to be a funny, caring and slightly socially awkward man, and how fast they became friends and it felt like somehow they had always known each other. Jack had dreamed about how Gabriel used to joke and mimic charismatic officers from war movies when things threatened to get too bleak. 

He dreamed about falling in love with Gabriel, and Gabriel loving him back. Together they felt like they could take over the world, or at least change it for good. They'd change the world, and after that they'd get married, move into an actual house or an apartment together, adopt two dogs, go out on actual well-planned dates, spend holidays on road-trips with their motorcycle, visit relatives and spend every other Christmas with the Reyes family and every other with the Morrisons. 

They had had so many plans, and hardly any of them had come to fruition. They had never driven across the US from coast to coast like they had promised. They had never adopted the dogs, nor any kind of a pet. They had never moved out of military bases. 

Jack took in a shuddering breath, shaking under the weight of his memories. “I just thought... I thought there would be more time.”

The radio either comforted or mocked them. _“I will stay by your side now and forever,  
I will always only be in love with you.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song fic is an underrated craft, let me tell you. There can be a soundtrack in text form too~ 
> 
> Thank you for reading. I'd love to hear your thoughts and feelings on this one. It makes my day every time!


	7. The tempting darkness

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, dear readers! Thank you all for your kudos and comments, they mean a lot to me. 
> 
> Here I am with an update, and let me tell you, I love me some body horror. 
> 
> I listened mostly to Interstellar's soundtrack when I was writing these last four chapters, but the song of the day is still [Road](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IiE_2uxBUhk&list=PLGaTZCX7RVn7imygkIgCkdeU8GPk0VVBD&index=1).

They drove in silence that was like clotted blood that had only moments ago ran hot and coursing. Something that they had worked up between them had come undone, but instead of relief it had brought on hollowness and weariness. 

Reaper wasn't paying any mind to the road, the scenery or the car, he was staring at Jack and nothing else. He didn't know what he was feeling or what he should have felt, but something cold and slithering and heavy seemed to move inside his gut. 

Morrison had been worn out, beaten until he was broken, and the man he was now was just as pitiful as he was dangerous. Old and broken, that's what he was, like the gold and sunshine had slowly shed and peeled off and left behind this version of him. Reaper felt a sickening kind of warmth inside himself when he looked at what Morrison was now, a drenched stray dog that was just begging to be let inside and be collared again. 

Reaper shifted on his place. It seemed that at the same pace that his thoughts became clearer his body responded with aching. He could feel the nanobots in his body, biting and eating and birthing. He was disgusted with himself, but Morrison was hardly any better than he was, just slightly more in touch with the past and the morals he had once held.

The space with no limits set by the laws or rules opened up below them, dark and endless and tempting. A mercenary already floated towards it, flirting with it, but when he accepted an agenda of an employer he was still attached to the rules and reason even though they weren't his own. 

That dark void rid of any reason or limits intrigued Reaper. It moved something inside him that he had presumed long dead, it made him hungry, and here was Morrison, dangling like a bait in front of him, just waiting to be pulled under. 

The hunger Reaper felt might not have been satisfied with just killing. 

“What did Overwatch ever do for either one of us?” Reaper asked. 

Morrison seemed to snap awake from some sort of a trance, perhaps called back from the memory lane. “What? What are you – Overwatch wasn't some sort of a family business, we were working towards a better world – “

“Exactly,” Reaper interrupted, “nothing. What are you still doing, working for that sad piece of good will? Are you gathering up scattered agents with no other place to go? Or whipping a new generation of bright-eyed little soldiers in shape so they can be thrown into war?”

“You know nothing about any of that,” Morrison grunted, clearly slighted. 

Reaper chuckled. “Well, whatever. I'm asking you why. Why are you still doing that when you got nothing back from there, and now you're old and gray and nameless. Wouldn't it be high time to ask for some reward for yourself?” Reaper offered the thought with the soft and smooth voice that he still had and he knew Morrison was used to trusting. 

He got a tired glance of a red visor and silence. 

“What a waste,” Reaper sighed. “Such waste. Haven't you ever wondered what you could do if you really gave it your all? SEP pumped us full of mystery cocktails worse than any back-alley bar, and then all the training and experience we got on top of that. Aren't you even a little bit curious of your limits?”

Morrison had his arm propped up against the car window, his hand resting on his forehead and the thumb rubbing circles into his temple. “What are you getting at?” he asked impatiently. 

“I'm saying that you could cut yourself off from all that,” Reaper said, almost in a whisper and yet he was confident that Morrison was listening to only him. “All that responsibility, the hassle, the mundane role of a servant. It's not like any of those scruffy kids are listening to you anyway. You're just a washed up old soldier, you can't help them or save them from their stupidity or naivety. And you know you have done enough to allow yourself the freedom, don't you?”

“Get to the point,” Morrison growled, and his right shoulder rose momentarily as if to shield him. Anyone else would have missed the gesture, but Reaper noticed. 

“I'm saying that nothing is forcing you to go back there,” Reaper said.

Morrison harrumphed. “Aren't you going to kill me tonight?”

Reaper hummed as if in thought. “Well... That's the thing. You're immeasurably precious to me, my number one kill... But then again I think we have both been wronged. We were torn apart.” The hunger he felt grew insistent and the warmth he felt when looking at Morrison burned his insides like acid, stinging and biting. “We could be together again, Jack,” he whispered. 

Morrison flinched. He didn't turn to look at the other, didn't move a single muscle as soon as he got himself under control, and while watching that Reaper knew he had a hold of him.

“We're half-way there anyway. We could just keep going and never tell a soul, just go ahead and disappear. Hell, they'd probably think we killed each other,” Reaper said. “We could forget about everyone and everything. I could share my list with you, and then we'd see what we can really do. Come on, think about it, Jack. We could hunt down every single person and organization that ever hurt us, that kept us apart and then abandoned us. We could take our revenge, kill and burn and destroy until there's nothing left.”

Morrison was gripping the wheel with force that must have turned his knuckles white under his red gloves. 

Reaper rather liked this dream he had whipped up, he honestly liked it like he hadn't liked anything in a long time, and so he kept going: “All those moments of pain and suffering that they put us through... Every thankless mission we ran, every holiday spent working, every single second at the mercy of the enemy... All those we could avenge. We could burn them all away and transform ourselves into new creatures again. Make everyone pay for everything, every single thing, big or small, the times on an operating table and the times under fire for not knowing something... And for that wedding we never had.”

The car slowed down when Morrison let his foot ease off the gas pedal. He was throwing several looks in Reaper's direction. “I can't do that,” he whispered hoarsely. 

It felt like Reaper's insides turned into liquid and sloshed through his bones onto his feet. He felt like he had gotten a slap in the face and got angry at himself for feeling like that even though he was the one calling the shots. 

“Well suit yourself. I'm glad I'm appropriately dressed for your funeral,” Reaper grunted and turned towards his window. They were now driving on a mountain side, and the road was like a snake slithering down the wall. They were driving slowly through the hairpin turns and approaching another valley full of small spruce trees, still no other cars or any sings of human life in sight. There were no more streetlights either, and they were left in the dark of the night with only the headlights of the car while the inside was illuminated by the glow of the meters and the red of Morrison's visor.

Reaper stared at the window and his own reflection. It was too dark to see anything beyond that, and the only thing of the reflection that was really him were the red eyes looking from the holes of the mask. The man that was still under there and against all nature lived. 

“I do hope you can appreciate this conversation because when you stop this car or we run out of gas, I'm slitting your throat,” he said. 

“So you keep reminding me,” Morrison said in a strained sigh. 

Reaper huffed. Whatever tension there had been was now gone, everything was done and he was ready to get this thing over with and return to the nearest safe-house or base. Morrison wouldn't follow him into the dark, and somehow he wasn't surprised. He wasn't even particularly excited about the kill anymore either, but one didn't turn down good things when they were handed to you.

“Feel free to pick a nice spot. I've waited in some very uncomfortable places before, so I can handle being in a car with you just fine.”

*

The operating table was cold under Gabriel's naked back, but the feeling was definitely the least uncomfortable at the moment. He didn't know what the hell had been pumped into his veins or what it did to his body, but whatever it was felt absolutely horrible. His muscles spasmed and convulsed, and if he hadn't been strapped onto the table he probably would have thrown himself to the floor, and he barely kept himself from groaning and crying out in pain.

He felt feverish and cold at the same time, shivering while he trembled, his breath coming in short pants as he fought to bear the pain tearing through his body. He was very aware of his veins because whatever it was burned and stung in all of them, and it felt like he could feel every single centimeter down to the smallest thread of the network of blood-vessels in his body, and every single one of them hurt. His heart hammered in his chest, filled with the poison that was his own blood, still pumping it and fighting against it, and he felt the muscle there, spasming and swelling and fighting.

It was going to be better soon. It was going to be okay. Those were things that were repeated to him, but he wasn't able to focus on them. 

“Just give it time, then everything will be okay,” said a doctor in a lab-coat while inserting an iv needle into his elbow. 

Distantly Gabriel noticed himself nodding, and his hoarse voice muttering out: “Okay... Okay...”

That was all he managed with the splitting ache spreading through his body and making him feel like a skin bag holding lumps of flesh and something like a jellyfish slowly paralyzing it all. He was acutely aware of everything his body did, and he was sure his skin hadn't ever been this sensitive. He felt the metal under his back and how his clammy skin rubbed against it, he felt every droplet of cold sweat rolling down and leaving a disgusting trail of salt in its wake, he felt his skin pulling tight when his muscles spasmed, so tight that sometimes he feared it would tear like fabric. The thought led to him becoming very aware of how he was really only inside this physical vessel and his skin was something living and organic that was wrapped around it, an organ functioning like gift wrapping and underneath that he was red muscles, lumpy organs and tubes full of organic fluids. 

The thought horrified him more than it probably should have, but in his probably mutating body and feverish mind he felt all of it in such terrifying detail it couldn't have been natural. If he had previously feared that whatever was pumped into his veins was acid now he was almost wishing it really would hollow him from inside out so he could end his physical existence and be free. Actually that felt like the sanest thought he had been able to grasp in a while; he wasn't his body, he was just inside it, something sacred, beautiful and spiritual just tied down into this impractical vessel that could only hurt and leak fluids. 

He longed for the darkness. He had passed out before, maybe from pain or just exhaustion, and he longed for that to happen again. Whatever he was able to become with this he never wanted to remember any of this. And so he chose to believe the doctor or the nurse of whoever it was who was measuring his vitals, that he was going to be okay, that everything would be okay if he just got some rest.

*

They had driven onto a mountain road that was small enough not to have streetlights, and Jack came to a conclusion that that was something to be concerned about. He slowed down and concentrated on what little he could see in the headlights, and hoped they would reach a bigger road soon. He wasn't that worried about the car since he had filled the tank in the small town before driving to the base, a full tank would get them six hundred miles and he had emergency fuel and spare tires in the trunk on top of that, no, what he was worrying about was the visor and how long he had been wearing it already. 

Jack generally wore the visor within the recommended time parameters and for the past four years he hadn't worn it otherwise than when he wasn't required to shoot at something, but now he was really pushing at the limits. He scolded himself for not preparing to drive this long since he clearly should have known the night would be long and he was going to be driving after the fight, and in addition he absolutely had to be prepared for a fight at any moment with Reyes. He had known all of that but had allowed himself to go through with the plan without a care for the time limit of the visor. He wondered if he had allowed that little fact slip into a blind spot of his psyche, and if he had indeed embarked on this mission knowing it was a suicide. 

Meanwhile Reyes was spinning him a tale that was almost as tempting as it was disturbing. Jack wasn't sure if Reyes truly meant what he said, that they could be together again if they both just forgot that they were human beings and became pure killers until there was nothing else left and all debts had been paid, or if he just whispered things like “precious” and “together” just to hurt him. 

“We could burn them all away and transform ourselves into new creatures again. Make everyone pay for everything, every single thing, big or small, the times on an operating table and the times under fire for not knowing something... And for that wedding we never had,” Reyes said, his voice deep and dark and so tempting, and then it didn't even matter that he was wearing a costume and a mask, he was so purely Gabriel Reyes that Jack could almost see him there in his casual hoodie and a beanie and stylishly worn out army boots. 

Jack felt a rush of guilt, anger and longing. Deep down he knew he didn't really hold any moral ground over Reyes no matter how much of a betrayal it was that Reyes worked for the mortal enemy of an organization they had built. Jack too had tasted the satisfaction he got from mowing down targets, the dark joy he experienced when an enemy went down efficiently and bloodily, and how sweet the revenge on the world around him really tasted. 

And of course what Reyes said was true. Jack knew no one needed him anymore. There was no duty or an oath he was bound by, and whatever was forming under the name of Overwatch now had nothing to do with him. He hadn't sent the recall, and all those who had responded were at least twenty years younger than him and already somewhat experienced. They didn't need him to run a boot-camp or the art of war 101. The threads he had once held had slipped from his hands and now younger ones were grasping them instead. Jack could just disappear in the dead of the night and nothing would change.

For a second Jack let himself consider it, and it was almost like sinking into a gentle daydream. Reyes was right in more ways than he had probably meant. Jack knew he was just flinging a lot of things in his way to hurt him, but there was also the possibility that Reyes still knew him better than most people and had the courage to confront him in a manner that Ana was too kind and polite to do, and inevitably some of his comments hit home so hard they hurt. 

For a second Jack let himself imagine them together again like they were now and frightened himself with how hard his heart ached at the thought. He wasn't even sure if Reyes was seriously suggesting it, but that only made the dream that much sweeter, a precious and fragile picture he wasn't sure he could ever make reality. And it would be awful too, it would be ugly and terrifying and absolutely horrid if they released their anger and bitterness and let them drown first themselves and then everyone around them. Jack had wondered where the true limits of his physical strength actually lied and if there was anything in him anymore that would make him feel guilt for wrongdoings. He was afraid to seek for those limits in case they didn't exist anymore, but tempted to just let go and sink in the freedom reserved for men without them. He was tired of being Jack Morrison anyway, tired of his life, tired of loosing and suffering in silence. 

Reyes had clearly given up his name and face, and Jack had already done something similar, so it wouldn't be a stretch to let himself forget who he was and that he was a man under his mask. There would be no need to think about anything, not the past or the future, it would be only endless freedom and pleasure of the hunt. 

But then reality caught up with Jack's daydream. They might have been a force without a match, but not otherworldly, and not invincible. They would be hunted, and eventually they would be caught and most likely meet their ends in a firefight, and since Overwatch was now on the move again and gathering other remarkable people, they would most likely die by their hands. Jack thought about how cruel it would be to make someone of their old friends to kill them, like Ana or Reinhardt or Torbjörn, or how perverse it would be to make the young soldiers take on the organization by killing the old Command. 

Jack's head ached, and his chest felt like it was trying to collapse in on itself. He rubbed his forehead and sighed: “I can't do that.” 

He sensed more than saw Reyes flinch on his seat. Rejection was always rejection, he supposed.

“Well suit yourself. I'm glad I'm appropriately dressed for your funeral,” Reyes snapped, and his leather coat groaned as he turned towards the window to sulk. 

Jack could almost appreciate the grim shred of humor there and how familiar it sounded, but there was something happening in his vision that demanded his immediate attention. The otherwise red field of vision now had a few white spots with green edges, like a stain of white ink or a little ball of electricity that was stuck there, swimming around a little bit but mostly sticking to one place, and no matter how much Jack blinked, frowned or tapped at the side of the visor, the distortions didn't go away. He knew fully well that they were not going anywhere, but rather would get worse soon. The regular headache he had was starting to focus more in between his eyes into a specific spot no larger than the tip of his finger, and pressure had started to gather there. It was bearable now, but Jack knew that eventually it would bore through his skull and into his brain like a screw. 

Reyes said something, and Jack gave him a half-hearted reply. Reyes seemed to be set on his plans of killing Jack the moment he'd stop the car, but Jack couldn't muster the will to grow too worried about that. It would be a stretch to grab his pulse-rifle from the backseat, but he knew exactly where he had placed it and could find it just as easily blind. But the future – even the very near future – felt distant even though the decisions he had to make were just a gas tank away, and he didn't really care. Now he was certain this was something sick and suicidal that he had unknowingly left without attention, but even his failure to execute this mission and keep his word to Ana didn't make him feel anything in one way or another. 

“You know I don't mean to act like I'm better than you,” Jack said. “I have very little moral ground to speak of, I know that and I can admit it. But I can also make my own decisions no matter how selfish they are, and that's not how I want to go out.”

“Yeah. I figured,” Reyes grunted dryly. “I don't even know why I asked.”

Jack made a sound that was almost a chuckle. “That's us. There's no figuring what we are about now, I mean, it's not like there are many examples of relationships going like ours. Well, maybe in comic books, but that's not... It's not the same.” He frowned and blinked, trying to force his facial muscles to relax. He had had a point he was trying to make, but he lost his train of thought when the ache kept intensifying. It was becoming increasingly hard to make up coherent sentences even though the ability to speak was still there. 

“Huh... Still trying to cling on to the thought we're something extraordinary and special?” Reyes huffed, and Jack imagined him crossing his arms and rolling his eyes. “That's just when you look through your rosy reality filter. Maybe we're just a general failure just like million others. Just because we have funny mutations and leather jackets doesn't make us special.” 

The serpent road turned into a bridge, and Jack rejoiced about the straight road. Not that blinking actually helped since the entire point of the visor was to bypass his eyes and put the visual information straight to his brain, but he had a feeling that the endless sharp turns were making him nauseous even faster than the budding migraine. 

“I don't mean to make us sound like a damn fairytale and you know that,” Jack corrected impatiently. “I meant that your average self-help book probably doesn't have a chapter on relations between mercenaries and vigilantes.” His voice was turning even more hoarse due to his quickly drying mouth, and the pain was turning his previous lethargic sadness into something snappy and mean instead, and he didn't have the energy to filter that in any way. Perhaps it was good, because if he annoyed Reyes enough he might get physical and maybe punch him or cut the side of his face with the metal talons in his gauntlets. Getting punched or cut anywhere in the head might actually help with the migraine, and wouldn't that be a blessing. 

“Oh I'm sure we'd find something relevant,” Reyes replied reassuringly and dripping with sarcasm. “Perhaps there are chapters on trust issues and disappointments, perhaps on lying and abandonment too. I'm sure I could relate to the army widow stories as well, or maybe even the dissatisfied house-wife trope but with a side of black-ops missions and traumatic torture experiences. Just hand me a tissue box and a glass of wine!”

White spots were quickly becoming very dominant in Jack's field of vision and he knew he couldn't drive much longer, but still he threw what he hoped was a crushing look in Reyes' direction. Not that the other could see it with the mask on, and not that Jack could really focus on anything that close to him right now, but the thought must have counted for something. “You know you walked away from me too!” he snapped, his selfishness taking over the apologetic side and the nostalgia. 

“I'm not the one who plays the innocent,” Reyes hissed. 

“I'm not doing that,” Jack said back. If the pressure between his eyes had resembled a screw moments ago, now it was more like a nail shot from a gun, and it sank deep. He imagined his skull splitting and his brain being about as resistant as jello, and his two main focus points were to keep the car on the road and listen to Reyes. The music on the radio was just background noise and he couldn't tell what it was, but it felt like gravel poured straight into his ears. 

“Sure, Jackie-boy, sure,” Reyes muttered next to him. Jack could feel the displeasure radiating from him and the other falling into the spiral of impatience and casual cruelty with him. They were flirting with the inevitable end at this point, and Jack didn't even care, just pressed down on the gas pedal. Maybe he'd derail the car and they wouldn't have to make any kind of a decision about this. 

Jack squeezed his left hand into a fist and dug the jutting knuckles into his forehead to ease the pressure but managed only to make his stomach turn and his vision flash momentarily completely white. He felt cold sweat starting to seep on his forehead. “Okay, what the hell is your problem?! I'm tired of this, Reyes, just get to the point and spit it out for Christ's sake! What do you really want to say to me, huh?!” he demanded, lashing out, egged on by the pain and the time running out. 

“I told you to stop calling me that!” Reyes said, raising his voice. 

“Or what?!” Jack snapped back. “And why not? That's your name! You can spout all that shit you want about me and us and whatnot, but your blabbering doesn't change it any more than mine does! I know who you are, and whatever scare tactics you like to pull with your costume won't change that, so deal with it!”

“Don't you dare make fun of me!” Reyes shouted at him. His voice rasped and resembled more of an animal screeching than a human man yelling. “You have _no idea_ what I've been through! And you're one to talk, did you miss your cozy Indiana high-school or what's with the number on your back? You should have just gone back there and started raising corn and brewing moonshine like the rest of you if you miss it that much!”

Jack winced and felt a sting that went deeper than most of Reyes' insults until now. He bit his teeth together and tried to put out the hurt and anger flaring up. “You're still not talking about anything real!” he snapped. “Oh how horrible, I played football when I was in high-school! Oh no, I'm from Midwest, what a flaw in my character and how much that hurts you personally! What the fuck is your problem, Reyes?! If you want to hurt me then pull a goddamn gun and stop running your mouth like a teenage bully!”

He heard Reyes move abruptly on his seat, turning around and sitting up straighter, and he heard one gauntlet slamming against the dashboard. “YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT PAIN IS!” Reyes yelled. “You don't know one thing about me! You don't know what you did, and you don't know me! Stop pretending like you're so good and pure and like you don't know what I'm about! You know fully well!” 

It seemed that once Reyes had allowed himself to shout, he couldn't stop. “You spit in my face and make fun of me when you don't even know what happened to me! Six years, Morrison! Six years I've been surviving, six years I've been collecting old debts to have some goddamn justice and peace, and _no one_ gets to just walk up to _me_ and start running their mouth at me now! Least of all people _you_!”

Jack slammed his fist against the wheel. “Well I'm sorry!” he yelled back at him. “I'm sorry that I don't know! How was I supposed to know!? I thought you were dead! What was I supposed to do now that you're not?!” 

“You could have left me be! As if there's anything really binding us together anymore! It's been six years, and even before that we were nothing!” Reyes shouted, pounding his fist against the dashboard to stress his point. 

“I couldn't just leave you!” Jack shouted, feeling the words break in his raw throat. Yelling hurt. The migraine felt like a hot needle piercing his skull, the pain was constant and sharp and no amount of rubbing eased it. The lights from the meters attacked his senses and all sound hurt his ears like his eardrums were about to tear. The pain was a nauseating bubble stretching him to his limits, and he wished it would burst already, he wished he could make it pop and let the blood and pus flow.

“You already left me,” Reyes spat, voice full of bitterness and cold rage. 

“I'm... I'm sorry,” Jack croaked out. “It's not that I stopped – “ He clamped his mouth shut. He meant to finish the sentence with 'loving you', but those were words that didn't belong here. Somehow he wasn't able to speak those at all, and did they even matter anymore? They belonged to another life, maybe to the time about a decade ago when they were still pure and genuine. Those words didn't have a place here anymore, and Jack felt like he didn't even have the right to speak them out loud anymore. 

But there still was one thing he had been lying to himself about, even earlier this evening. He might not be bound by oaths to his country, Overwatch or any army, those he had already claimed and they had dissolved with his death and thus dismissal from service, but there was still one oath he had sworn, and that was what had taken him here today. He had sworn in front of his friends and a legal representative to be by Gabriel Reyes' side until death did them part, and even though any legal documents they had signed were now null due to their official deaths, the reality was different. Reyes was still Jack's lawfully wedded husband, as Jack was his, and that was an oath that still had a hold of him. 

And then the end of his rope came. They were on another dark road that was following a gently sloping mountain side, a cliff on one side and a small patch of forest and a bank full of wild flowers on the other. Jack's migraine had reached its peak, he felt the pain in every corner of his head and radiating into his neck, and now he could feel his stomach turning and his jaw starting to slack.

Jack slammed on the breaks. The tires locked and glided on the road a bit, and half blind he steered the vehicle across the lanes and to the left side, onto the narrow bank and to a full stop. He fought with his seatbelt while pawing at the fastenings of his mask and visor with clumsy, numb fingers and after a struggle freed himself. He was still fighting with the mask when the seatbelt snapped back, he opened the door and all but fell out of the car. 

He barely stayed on his feet by taking support on the side of the car with one hand, the other tearing at the mask. Finally the mask and the visor came undone, the world disappeared into complete darkness and the cool night air hit Jack's sweaty face. He took a few staggering steps towards the ditch, doubled over and vomited. 

The first burst was the heaviest, but the second one was already coming up too and he barely had the time to take a short shuddering breath before it came out. He let go of the car and took support on his knees instead, took a few heavy breaths while waiting for the wave of nausea to pass. He gagged a few times more and coughed, but mostly just acid and water came up. He spat at the ground, suckled on his teeth some and spat again, then forced himself to take several deep, slow breaths to stop his gut from convulsing and throat clamping. His mouth felt sticky and tasted disgusting, but with the cool fresh air on his face and in his lungs he felt slightly better. 

In the dark of the night Jack was completely blind but the darkness was sweet rest for his brain, and he knew from experience that the migraine would pass soon. He already felt his left arm, hand and half of his face growing numb, anticipating that he would get better soon. 

Behind him he heard the car door open, and then Reyes' boots on asphalt. He walked around the car, but stopped a fair distance away. Jack didn't hear any hurry in his movements or a gun coming out of its holster. 

“Carsickness? Seriously?” Reyes said, indifferent and disbelieving. “Damn, you really are getting fragile in your old age, Morrison, it isn't just early grays anymore.”

Jack spat on the ground once more for a good measure and carefully straightened his back. Sudden movements would set off waves of pain in his head and he was feeling a bit shaky but did his best to mask that. He wished he had something to wipe his mouth with but had to settle on the back of his gloves. “No, it's not that,” he answered to Reyes while trying to take his gloves off with his left hand that was almost completely paralyzed. “I got a migraine. I hate to say, but my driving stops here.” 

He had dropped the mask somewhere nearby. The little key to set off the sound locator was in his trouser pocket in case he didn't find it by feeling around, but Jack had a feeling he would never need it again. He couldn't wear the visor again in at least twelve hours, and something told him he wouldn't get to comfortably rest until that time. They had stopped driving, and that was it. 

Jack kept his back turned to Reyes for a while longer. He hadn't felt any vomit splatter on his face but couldn't tell if his gloves were dirty, so he tossed them on the ground. He'd find new ones if he ever needed them. He inched his right boot to the side and swiped it in a slow arc, gently feeling around for his visor, and when he didn't find it took a step on the edge of the arc he had just drawn and repeated the motion. Not a sound was coming from Reyes, no words, no steps and not even his leather jacket groaning, and he could have as well as disappeared from Jack's world.

Jack had to take another step and swipe with his foot to finally locate the visor. It was in two parts now, the visor and the air filter a bit closer to him than the frame with the temple links and the fastenings, but close enough that when Jack crouched down to pick them up he didn't need to tap around much. 

“Oh c'mon, it isn't that dark,” Reyes huffed. Judging by his voice he hadn't moved. 

Jack chuckled at that, straightened up with his mask in his hands and took two steps back to the car. He bumped his elbow lightly against the door he had left open, then bent down to toss the mask in the backseat with his duffel and the pulse-rifle. “It is for me,” he said. He put his better hand against the car and followed the side approximately to the front tire and stopped there, turning his face to the direction he assumed Reyes was standing in. The headlights were still lit even though his sudden parking job had killed the engine (and Reyes had had the sense to pull the parking break because Jack certainly had left the gear on), but the light wasn't bright enough to make Jack's eyes sense anything more than that they were on. 

Jack gestured at his face. “In case you can't tell, I'm blind.” The small hairs in the back of his neck stood up and for a moment he thought that Reyes would just pull a shotgun out and shoot him right away since he couldn't offer him much of a fight, but only silence followed. Jack tilted his head slightly so he turned his ear towards Reyes instead of his useless eyes. 

“No you're not,” Reyes said blankly. 

Jack snorted. “Yes, I am. Well, I could see something if there was daylight, but now everything is just a dark blur to me.”

“Then how many fingers am I holding up?” Reyes said, sounding a bit challenging. 

Jack let out a suffering sigh. “I don't know.”

“You're looking this way.”

“I can hear your voice just fine, you idiot. And based on how well I know you I'd say you're holding up one finger, and it's your middle one.”

“Hmph.”

The night was cold but there was no wind. Jack heard Reyes' boots scratching on the asphalt when he probably shifted where he stood, unsure what to do. Jack realized that his disability shook Reyes' perception of him and most likely forced him to re-evaluate the situation, and it would be a moment before he'd settle on executing a plan. Jack knew that when Reyes recovered from his slight shock he'd most likely draw his gun and shoot him, and if it came to that Jack's options were few and his survival unlikely, but then again it was fast becoming clearer and clearer to him that he didn't care about that. 

The thought that he most likely would die tonight suddenly became very real, and Jack felt a heavy sense of serenity settling over him. At least they were together, and if it was Reyes who finally killed him... well, that just might be alright. He leaned against the car and took a deep breath of air, and it tasted sweet and crisp and was full of the scent of trees. “Do you want to know why I came for you?” he asked. 

Reyes huffed. “That's what I've been trying to extract from you for the better part of tonight.”

“I took an oath and I'm here to honor it. I'm not... I'm not trying to beg for your forgiveness or try to fix things or seek absolution. But I did take an oath and I never thought of our vows nothing less than the one I took when I entered the military. So I had to come for you, I had to know and... resolve this. Somehow,” Jack said, trying to speak towards Reyes but truly addressing the darkness. 

For a moment Reyes didn't say anything, but then he released a bitter, biting laugh. 

It didn't hurt Jack like it would have moments before. It was like a sharp slap on a cheek, but he simply waited for what would happen next. 

Reyes sounded angry again when he spoke: “You and your oaths and honor... You're so pretentious!”

“I meant what I said,” Jack said. “I have nothing else.”

Reyes spat, either in disgust or rejection or both. “Words... That's all you are, what you ever were! Just words that you call oaths and promises even though you never do the legwork needed to actually make them mean anything.”

Jack raised his brows. They were churning water here with the same argument that was about to happen again, but then again he really didn't know Reyes anymore, and that was the part that made his chest feel so tight. “How am I just words? Because I failed?” he asked. 

Reyes let out another rough laugh. It sounded like the noise was painful to make, and he spat again afterwards, as if laughing brought up something from his throat, like blood or mucus. “You made a lot of promises to me but didn't really follow through with them. You talk about running out of time and work coming in the way, but the truth is you let that stop you. You didn't _make_ the time. Your words, your promises, your _ring_ are all meaningless to me!”

Jack sighed and turned his face towards the sky. “I regret that too, you know.”

“I don't care,” Reyes snapped. “And it's not that I care about it _all_. But you come here and start blabbering nonsense about oaths you didn't even make official. My grandmother used to say that proposal is just a fancy piece of jewelry if you don't get married.”

The serenity Jack was getting used to was suddenly gone. He stood still for a second and then carefully pushed himself upright again. A sense of vulnerability took over now that he stood here with his pulse-rifle in the car out of his immediate reach and he himself blind and thus pretty much useless in terms of operating the weapon. He felt naked and defenseless in a way that had nothing to do with his bared face and blind eyes. 

“Me and Reyes are married,” he said. He heard his own voice transforming into the voice of Soldier like flicking a switch. He felt a burst of adrenaline enter his system and his thoughts started to race, trying to make sense of the situation and planning attack and defense and a way out at the same time.

The other man didn't move. “No we're not,” he said, argumentative. 

Jack stayed still but tense, like pulled from a string. “Yes, we are. I married Reyes in record time in a magistrate office in New York just before we boarded a flight to Spain. Amari, Wilhelm and Lindholm were the witnesses, and we almost missed our flight because of the detour.”

The other was quiet, but the metal heels of the boots dragged against the asphalt, moving slightly away from Jack. “That... That never happened,” he argued. 

“Yes, it did,” Jack continued to claim, impatient and tense and quickly getting angry. “We got a civil ceremony because he was Catholic and I'm a Protestant and we never worked out the kinks between that and our families, but we did get married after a mission in Mexico. We were wedded husbands for seventeen years, and anyone who had checked our legal backgrounds would know that. Or anyone who was close to us.” The sweetness of the memory was lost in Jack's quickly rising anger that was heeded on by his undeniable underdog position. He dared to take one step backwards, closer to the car door, closer to his rifle. “Who are you?”


	8. Transformations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have a lot to say and nothing to say about this one. Yeah. All of this came from me. Pain is real. 
> 
> Please go ahead. This is in your care now.

“Who are you?” Morrison demanded. 

Reaper took another step backwards, away from the suddenly angry and extremely defensive man spouting lies he seemed to believe in. This was an entirely new game, one that seemed to have zero logic or previous warning, something that couldn't even be called derailing because it didn't have any connection to the subject or the theme before. 

Morrison was suddenly back in a fighting stance and clearly inching towards his rifle in the backseat, though what good would it be for a blind man, Reaper wondered. 

But the shift in Morrison's mood and tone was so sudden, complete and strange it had to be genuine. This was a very odd new game. “You know who I am, I _told_ you,” Reaper said with a voice he fought to keep level. 

“That you did, but you're not playing your part as well as you think,” Morrison snarled in reply and took another step towards the car. “Who. Are. You?! What are you playing at?!”

Reaper nearly stumbled backwards, out of the brightness of the headlights. Morrison had changed from the familiar and meek man back into the fierce soldier who was barking at him like he was a stranger, and Reaper just couldn't make sense of that. He didn't understand this turn of events, he couldn't explain or reason it, and he had no idea what the endgame could be. He was afraid.

“I'm not!” he yelled. “You're the one who's playing! You're lying to me! You can't face me in a fight, and you're nothing more than a coward and a liar!”

Morrison stilled. He seemed to think furiously for a second, his eyes staring empty ahead but his brow furrowed and his mouth slightly pursed in a way Reaper recognized from his distant memories very well.

When Morrison spoke again, his voice was low and stable: “I'm not the one playing. I have nothing to gain and I don't want to be cruel to you either. If you are who you say you are, you know what I'm saying is the truth.”

“I _am_ , and no it's _not_!” Reaper spat back. And Morrison was lying about more than one thing, because this was cruelty, this was cruelty at its purest. He was messing with the memories of the past when everything had been bright and good, and it felt like he had struck an ice-pick through his eye socket into his brain and was now just stirring it carelessly, and it hurt as much as well. Reaper was clearly here and not confused, he wasn't focused on research or mission plans nor was he on strong pain medication, and yet his heart was racing and he just couldn't follow the plot of the conversation.

And Morrison just kept pressing, kept stirring: “Both of those are not true. If you were my husband you'd know about that, and if you knew about that then there'd be no reason to get this upset about it. It doesn't change anything, but it's true.”

“Shut up,” Reaper snapped. The light was starting to hurt his eyes and he turned his face towards the dark instead. His thoughts were racing too while trying to figure out what this was about, what was going on and where was the point in all of this. There had to be a point, some kind of a point, it didn't make any sense for this to be just a random stunt from Morrison, and if among all of this there was one thing Reaper instinctively knew to be true it was that Morrison didn't meant to be cruel to him. He might have been out for his blood, but not with a sadistic, vengeful gleam in his eyes – if they even gleamed anymore, that was. It was the oddness, the utter madness of the conversation that wreaked havoc in his mind and made his head hurt. “I... I need to get some rest,” he muttered out loud to no one in particular. 

“Wha – No, no, don't you dare to leave now!” Morrison shouted after him, recovering from mild surprise and turning to anger. “You stay right where you are, and you and I are gonna settle this right now!”

“Shut up! Didn't I tell you already!? Shut the fuck up, Morrison!” Reaper shouted. He and his stupid lies, his pathetic fantasies he no doubt indulged in to drown his doubts and regrets, and now Reaper was getting the splatters of that mess on him. Morrison was so sad and pathetic with his worries about life and the time passed by, like the old man he was, just waiting to fall into the closest open grave and turn into dust and be forgotten. 

A wave of hate came over Reaper as he thought of Morrison and graves and the pure white crosses marked “Unknown Soldier”. That would serve him right, to finally have the spark of life and his stubborn voice snuffed out, be tossed into a black pit and covered in soil. He'd be pushing daisies before next summer, and that would the first good thing he had accomplished in a long, long while.

Reaper took another step further into the dark, spared a look towards the car and startled when he noticed that Morrison had come closer to him while he had tried to put distance between them. Morrison stood in front of the car now, his figure splitting the bright light and one hand resting on the hood, guiding him. The light threw deep shadows on his face, and he looked even older now, the lines in his face deep and accented and his white stubble and gray hair almost shining in the same light. He was just a human, a man on his last mission, ready to die and practically begging for the end to come and claim him. 

Reaper was steadier on his feet when he thought about it like that. Morrison wanted his rest and that was why he had sought him out, to give him the final blow to the head and put his lights out permanently. Yes, that was the point he thought he had lost. Death. The cold and sweet embrace of death that was expecting him, maybe them both even. That was the silent agreement they had arrived at while they were driving, that once the car stopped that would be it, the end of the line. 

“Try to remember, Reyes!” Morrison called out to him, his face turned eerily accurately towards Reaper's position. “You know it's true! Remember how we were both in our strike-team uniforms? How we dragged our full battle kits with us because we signed them in as hand-luggage and they took up so much space? Remember how we had just carried the rings around because we were huge saps and we both had our vows ready and all even though we hadn't set a date or planned anything? Remember how we set the local record in getting married under two minutes?”

Stirring, stirring. Reaper felt a strange pressure in the front of his skull like he was about to bust a blood vessel there. It was a worrying feeling even though he knew the nanobots in his system would just go there and fix it before the hemorrhage would even happen, but what was even more worrying was that what Morrison was saying was ringing some very small, very distant bells.

The embarrassment of taking the wedding ring out of his wallet where it had been for years already because he had bought the real deal immediately after Morrison had proposed. The ring had been simple and made of silver, Morrison's favored metal. 

That embarrassment had completely vanished when Morrison had taken out a ring as well and laughed, telling a very similar story. It was traditional and golden to please Gabriel's Catholic family, but the small decorative pearls in it had been made out of bone, because Jack just knew him that well. 

All their friends had cried during their vows, which was amazing because even with the vows, the rings and the paper-signing their wedding took less than two minutes, and miraculously they didn't even miss the flight. 

And the flight had been a fun one since their team – their friends – insisted that they hold a wedding reception for them there, and so they had broken regulations, put their money together and ordered several small bottles of sparkling wine and chocolates to go with their airplane meals. They had cheered and even given a few speeches, and jokingly told them that they did have earplugs if they planned to have their wedding night here as well, just please give them a warning before getting down to it. 

Ana had folded their paper serviettes into flowers to make them more festive, and Reinhardt had been in exceptionally high spirits, congratulated them over and over again and made them promise to follow through with the waltz as soon as they touched the ground again. And Torbjörn had rang his prosthetic arm against his wine bottle at least a dozen times to make the newly-wedded couple kiss over and over again, and every time they had indulged. 

And Jack. Jack next to him, in his lap, with his arm around his shoulders or on his back, stroking the back of his neck and toying with his hair or resting his head against his, laughing and holding his hand and playing with his ring and looking at him with his big blue eyes full of – 

Reaper wobbled on his feet further in the dark, but the memory was merciless. It pushed through like water through a tear in the hull of a sinking ship, and it was like the memory flood had the pressure of the ocean behind it too because information just came through, details, names, faces, words, smells, sights, sensations and feelings and he was drowning in it all with no way to sort it or stop it.

He made a pained noise behind his gritting teeth and slammed himself with a fist in the forehead like it would make it stop, and when it didn't he hit himself again, and then again. By accident he caught a sight of Morrison who was now clearly on his side of the car and coming closer even if hesitantly, and suddenly anger and fear twisted into each other in Reaper's gut, he staggered backwards and yelled: “You stay away! Don't come any closer, this is all your fault! You're doing this to me!” He wanted to believe this was a trick of some sorts, effects of something Morrison had slipped him or just some very elaborate mind-game that just felt too real, but all he could read from Morrison's face was slight confusion and worry. Worry for his well-being, even after all of this, all this time and deeds and blood. 

Eventually fear took over anger and Reaper turned his back to Morrison so he wouldn't have to see his face anymore, his disgusting worry or his ruined eyes or his free hand extended towards him. Reaper turned his face towards the dark of the night and yanked his hood down so he could claw at his temples and skull, trying to stop the punishing spray of unsorted memories filling his head and pulling him under. 

“Please...” he whined in a quiet voice, “please I just need some rest.”

“What's wrong? Reyes?” Morrison asked behind him, genuinely worried and Reaper hated him for it.

“I told you to stop calling me that!” he yelled, but the damage had already been done. The name belonged to him and he knew it. It was his name, but only in the past life. Since then he had given it up and chosen something more appropriate for this new kind of creature that he was, and the name Gabriel Reyes had been pushed into the dark of the back of his mind. But it was that same darkness that was now leaking and threatening to drown everything he had built, the same darkness that before had been so tender and caring, hiding everything he didn't want to look at and saving him from it. But now he had turned towards the darkness, and when he looked into it it opened its jaws and swallowed him whole. 

*

The operating table was hard and cold when Gabriel laid on it. He had his uniform shirt, his trousers and his beanie, but no shoes or socks, and he could tell he was strapped onto the table even though he doubted he could have moved even if he wasn't. 

Everything was dizzy, and where that ended pain started. His breath came out harsh and struggling, and every inhale made agony slash through his upper body. He must have broken at least four of his ribs and severely too, and the same marrow-deep ache was pulsing in two places in his arm as well as in his ankles and feet, so those weren't the only ones. 

Bones aside, he had worse, more immediate injuries all over his body, some so deep Gabriel could feel the blood leave his system like from a spring through the deep holes torn into it. His side, chest, sides of his neck and his entire face were pulsing with hot pain that was so total it was hard to tell where the damage was other than _everywhere_. While fighting for his breath and willing himself to stay calm Gabriel couldn't help but realize that even though he could feel several deep cuts and puncture wounds, the pain had so completely taken over that all of his skin might as well have been burned off his face and chest. 

Despite all the pain Gabriel fought to form thoughts and make some sort of sense of his surroundings. He had laid on operating tables enough in his life to know one by just the feeling, and operating table meant that he was in a hospital or other medical facility which was good. What wasn't so good was how quiet it was. It wasn't supposed to be quiet, quiet was impossible in a situation like this. The Zürich Headquarters had blown up, and there had been hundreds of agents and other staff in the building at that time, and this quiet, private little room absolutely wasn't a part of any field hospital or an emergency care unit like Gabriel had seen. 

Zürich. Even through his haze of pain Gabriel could think clearly for a moment just because of the name. Their peaceful strike turned into protest turned into mutiny had definitely gotten out of hand, and afterwards Gabriel could see that it had never been in his control anyway. They had been breached worse than even he with all his eyes and ears and experience could have predicted, and the corruption had spread through Overwatch, all the way to the upper command, he knew that now. 

The memory was painfully sharp and the conclusions he drew out of that were merciless. He didn't know who had shot first or who had returned the fire, but once that spark had been lit it was out of his control. The chaos that had followed was absolute madness, and he shook a bit when he thought about it now. It had been a trap, and once they sprang it the chaos had spread like wildfire in dry grass, unstoppable and all-consuming. 

How long had the explosives been set up in the base, he wondered. The destruction caused by the blow was so massive that it must have been a string of bombs rather than one, all set up in tactical places around the base, designed to bring the entire building down in a matter of minutes. It was a careful design that must have taken some time, and it had all happened right under their noses.

The bitter taste of failure and defeat burned in Gabriel's throat. He had thought he was putting a stop to the corruption, righting the wrongs and finally shedding some light on the cockroaches that had infested Overwatch, and all he needed was one ally, the most powerful and trusted ally he had ever had. If only he could slap Jack awake and bring him up to speed at how serious the situation already was, together they could take action and – 

Another crystal clear, cruel memory pierced through the pain. Jack falling through with the crumbling floor, swallowed by the sea of flames and black smoke. Gabriel himself was extending his hands towards him in vain, one holding a shotgun and one trying to pull Jack back to solid ground. A cold feeling slithered through him making his skin crawl. He had pointed a weapon at Jack, at his best friend, at his husband. He had pointed a weapon at him, and then let his lifeline slip from his grasp, leaving him to fall into fire and ruin. 

Jack was dead. 

A weak howl of loss tore itself from Gabriel's throat. He struggled in his bonds hoping to shake the new kind of pain inside his chest off of him, but it had sunken its claws into him and only tightened its hold. Jack was dead. He was gone, gone for good and forever, and Gabriel was here alone, left behind. Another cry left his mouth. His face was full of aching spots and cold shreds and so he wasn't sure of it, but he thought there were tears streaming down through the mess. 

Suddenly the lights in the room amplified, above him one round bright light was lit, and he realized he was in an operating theater. Distantly he knew that of course he was there but wondered why he wasn't already under anesthesia and in operation since he was practically ready for the grim reaper with his broken bones and burned and shredded flesh, probably jammed full of debris right through his chest and stomach and leaking like a ruptured sewer pipe. 

People appeared in his field of vision, surgeons with their paper clothes and masks and their assistants with instrument trays and clipboards, all ready for evaluation and operation. 

Gabriel was gasping air into his aching lungs and whining on each exhale, tears and blood mixing on his face and his gaze darted around from person to person above him. 

“What.... Where...?” he managed to force out. Speaking was difficult and his words came out garbled. He felt air escaping from holes that weren't supposed to be there. 

“Subject is conscious and capable of speech,” said one of the doctors who was bent over him. He had a surgical mask and protective eye-wear, and it was impossible to say anything about his features. A nurse by his side took notes. “Welcome, Mr. Reyes,” he greeted. 

Gabriel expected the operation to begin immediately and comforted himself that the pain would last only a little longer before a mask would be pressed to his face soon and feed him gas to take him under. But nothing of sorts happened, actually nothing happened at all. Even in his mind that was in shambles and probably close to shock Gabriel realized that this wasn't how things were supposed to be: he was in an operating theater with a team of surgeons around him and he was obviously in critical condition and in need of emergency care, but no one else but him seemed to realize that. 

“Wh – What are –“ _what are you waiting for?_ he wanted to ask, but talking was hard. 

The same doctor as before spoke again. He had a calm, almost indifferent deep voice that always sounded like he was explaining something. His tones and habits brought in mind a particularly focused middle-school teacher. “We are inspecting and observing, Mr. Reyes. This might take a while since your body has been subjected to a combination of so many interesting changes during your lifetime. Truly fascinating, but it also means that it will take us some time to map out and reverse-engineer this. Please be patient.”

Gabriel didn't understand. That didn't sound like anything he had gotten used to hearing from medics, and besides Angela could answer all those questions, she had her charts and tests and policies. Where was she anyway?

“Hm. I suppose we could start extracting the foreign objects,” the doctor said. “Those aren't going anywhere by themselves. Let's hook him on blood and amplifiers for now. He's going to need the blood and we might as well test the current model of amplifiers on the side.”

The team got to work, and distantly Gabriel felt an iv-needle being pushed into his arm, but he couldn't move his head to see what more than blood they were pumping into him. 

The doctor in command leaned over Gabriel's head and talked straight to him: “I'd start to get used to the discomfort if I were you. The road to discovery won't be too comfortable for you I'm afraid.”

“Who are you?” Gabriel managed to choke out. “Wh – What ar... e you – doing... to me?”

The man above him tilted his head and half shrugged, and Gabriel imagined a self-satisfied, dry smile under the mask. “We're discovering immortality, Mr. Reyes. I'm looking forward to working with you. Welcome to Talon.”

Something cold curled up inside Gabriel's chest, and it took him a moment to recognize the feeling of fear and associate it back to the previous instances when he had been captured by the enemy. They weren't many and they hadn't lasted long, but this time he had a very firm, knee-buckling feeling that help wasn't coming. 

The operation started, and nothing even resembling anesthesia came. The doctors and nurses – if they had any education to actually justify to be called that – got to work with the organizing skills and pace of ants and the skill of a hobby crafter. First his clothes were clipped off of him with scissors, starting with his shirt, then his trousers and whatever else was left until he lay on the shreds of his clothes like a freshly skinned animal, completely naked. Despite the pain and fear there was a small part of him that mustered up a wave of hot shame at his nudity. 

Gabriel writhed in his ties and panted as four pairs of hands with forceps picked and pulled pieces of debris out of his body, and occasionally someone poured something liquid on his wounds to clean them. No one looked at him or said anything to him, and he couldn't speak much even if he had wanted to. The arm the iv was hooked into felt swollen and hot, and there was no way it was just blood they were putting in him. Gabriel distantly wondered what the amplifiers they had mentioned were and what they were doing to him, but the sea of pain was too deep and suffocating for him to string together a longer chain of deduction or speculation. 

“Four doses of amplifiers completed,” reported one of the assistants.

The doctor in charge nodded. “Activate them and see what happens.”

Gabriel heard a touch-screen being tapped a few times, and after a second he yelled in pain. It felt like his blood had suddenly turned into needles but was still pushing its way through the soft fleshy tubes anyway, and the feeling was agonizing. He convulsed on his place and his chest expanded and shrunk down with the shallow gasps he impulsively took. He tried to bite his teeth together and fight the pain, fight his reactions and his instincts like he had learned in training if only to spite the Talon agents however he could, but something frightening and alien was happening inside his body, inside his very own flesh, and his body twitched and trashed like it had a mind of its own.

“Hm. That's disappointing,” said the doctor. “It would seem that Ziegler's nanobots reject the amplifiers. We need to adjust the design. Take blood samples and update the project log.”

The faceless assistants got to work around them. Forceps still yanked stuff out of Gabriel's flesh, and someone asked for a stitching needle so apparently he was also being put together. He stared into the bright light above him, panted, sweated and bled and bit his teeth together. The pain heeded the waking of rage at his position, lying here at the hands of the enemy, naked and spread on a table like a frog in middle-school biology class. He hated everyone, every single person currently present or responsible for his situation, he hated them all on a deep, personal level. 

A face appeared above him blocking the light, and this time the doctor took off his surgical mask and the eye-wear. Underneath was a middle-aged man who looked like he was about ten years younger than Gabriel. He had a square face, dusty brown hair combed on the side, brown eyes and a big, round nose in the middle of his face. He didn't look remarkable in any way, but his gaze darted around and had a deeply calculating chilly shade in it that told Gabriel instantly why this man was in charge. 

“I am looking forward to working together with you, Mr. Reyes,” the man said. “I must confess, I'm rarely envious of my colleagues, but Dr. Ziegler's nanotechnology is something we have been dying to get our hands on.”

It was hard to speak while his breath struggled so much, but mentally Gabriel went through his “mad scientist” -check-list and checked almost every box. After a moment he got a hang of his own mouth and spat out: “Fuck. You.”

The man above him gave him a tight fake smile. “Nice to meet you too. You can call me Dr. O'Brien. As for why you are here, we'd like some answers from you.”

Gabriel almost laughed. Standard interrogation. He was almost looking forward to those sessions to see how much his own tactics and stuff he had invented they would try to play him with. “Yeah?” he breathed. “I'll never talk.”

O'Brien gave him another fake smile, didn't respond and pulled back, and when he spoke he spoke to his team: “Take the samples and bring them to the lab. Stabilize the subject and store him.”

Storing was very literal. Gabriel wasn't released from his ties, not even after the operation. He was stitched up and several more bags with varying contents were hooked into his iv, more blood and something clear, perhaps nutrition. When the nurses and doctors or whatever they were deemed him stable, they cleaned out their instruments and lights, pushed the operating table to the corner, turned off the lights and left him there in the room alone and in the dark. There were no windows and the space smelled like someone's basement, and sometimes the pipes carried echoes from elsewhere. 

Gabriel steeled himself and counted his breaths. Isolation was a classic tactic used on prisoners of war around the world and throughout history. He knew what purpose it served and he knew how to fight it. He knew Angela's nanobots were healing him faster than just his own body chemistry could, and the changes from SEP were adding up to that. He'd grow stronger soon, and before long he could think. 

Shivering alone and naked in the dark he thought about the people he missed. The key to fight the isolation was to create your own company inside your head, and Gabriel did just that. He closed his eyes and imagined mundane conversations with his troops, the kind you had to pass the time during a long flight or in a casual group in the mess hall. He entertained himself with detailed discussions about food and made up views from bases and long trips on a train. 

Once or twice he tried to think about his friends and family, but those memories were painful and he feared they would make him break down faster if he let himself wander too far into the things he missed and loved and cherished. Thinking about Jack was the most painful. Everything else here he could handle, but not thinking about Jack. He knew all of this was temporary, and he could live with being referred to as a subject, he could live through the tests and being a play-thing to some horrible world-peace-threatening ends, but thinking about Jack made sharp pain cut through what felt like his very soul, and everything was just that much darker and colder after. 

Gabriel told himself that if Jack had been alive he could have thought about him, their quiet mornings and relaxed conversations and domestic habits that had merged together after such a long time together, and he could have missed him and thought about him somewhere out there. But Jack wasn't out there waiting for him to get home, he was laying in the rubble, long dead, and the reality cut Gabriel painfully every time he tried to think about him. Along with the pain came shame and regret. Desk-jobs hadn't been good for either one of them, Gabriel had always known it and still it had gotten to him. He had acted bratty and stupid just like the civilians he had looked down upon every time he was on a holiday during his army service, and lost sight of what really mattered. Only when the building was burning up and coming down around them had Gabriel remembered how much he still loved Jack and how he wanted to mend their relationship, sleep in the same bed and wear his wedding ring again.

But now it was too late. It was in the past, Jack was dead and Gabriel was trapped in Talon's shit-pit, and God knew what was about to happen to him.

He didn't know how long he had been alone in the dark, but he estimated days since he had fallen asleep at least twice and slept for a good while, and then suddenly lights came on. The room was lit with bright and pale fluorescent lights and they hurt Gabriel's eyes after all the time in the dark, and a team of doctors with their trays and instruments came in. The team was lead by the familiar doctor O'Brien, and they got to work immediately. They set up their computers and instruments and brought out whatever they were testing today, and then Gabriel was brought into the madness. 

He had definitely been there for at least three days, perhaps more, but even though he felt hungry he wasn't thirsty or really starving either, which confirmed his suspicions that his iv held at least some form of nutrients. He felt the familiar sharp shame come over him in the bright light and under the medical research team, not only because of his nudity but also because while he had been laying there his body had relieved itself on three painfully humiliating occasions, and the experience was re-experienced now that all these strangers where here to see it. 

No one made a particular note of the mess, and Gabriel hated how they were pointedly giving him the absolute minimum of dignity and hated even more how he was grateful for that. 

Someone walked into the corner of the room, something metallic squeaked repeatedly like a valve being loosened, and a sound of running water filled the room. The sound came closer, and when the assistant came back into Gabriel's field of vision, he was holding a garden hose.

Others stepped back for a moment when the assistant plainly hosed Gabriel down like a dirty dog. The water was so cold that he almost yelped when it hit him. Once the spray hit him in the face making him swallow a mouthful of it and inhale some, and he coughed it up through his mouth and nostrils while his hair was drenched. After they deemed him clean the water was closed off, and the wet shreds of his clothes they had left him with were cleaned up. 

Only after that doctor O'Brien came back into view, leaning over him with his hands behind his back and this time without any mask. After a quick visual evaluation he pointedly looked away from Gabriel's naked body and gestured at his team. “Please, give the man some decency!” 

Gabriel almost chuckled at that and rolled his eyes. As if he had forgotten that the same man had ordered him stripped and abandoned in the first place. 

The team worked quietly and soon he was covered in sheets of fluorine-coloured paper like a patient about to undergo surgery, and decency really was all that those offered since the chilly air was bitingly cold against his wet skin. 

Gabriel could only prepare mentally for the future torment and the inevitable questions that Talon wanted answers to from him, and that must have been one hell of a load of questions: he was the Commander of Blackwatch, the very next rank from the Strike-Commander, and he knew a lot. Talking wasn't an option here. 

And then the session started. Iv-bags were replaced with new ones, and several trays of instruments were spread out on both sides of the table. Sensors were placed on him, and needles pierced his skin and muscle, small scalpels cut his skin and clear plastic tubes were pushed inside and taped in place. Something was injected into the iv-tube and all he could do was to watch it flow through it and into his body. 

It was quiet and Gabriel could have as well been a corpse because no one made any attempt to say or ask anything, not even O'Brien who was the only recognizable one without a mask and who walked around measuring things into syringes and tapping on sensors and computers they were hooked up on. Nothing too bad, only uncomfortable and strange, and Gabriel had no idea how long any of it went on. And then the amplifiers came into the picture again. 

He was almost dozing off while doing breathing exercises and counting backwards from hundred to zero, but picked up on the word “amplifiers” when it came up, and then four, big syringes were stabbed into him all at once. It felt like they were pushing sand into his muscles and veins, and once the sand mixed with his blood it seemed to come alive. Gabriel opened his mouth to gasp, but he couldn't pull any air in, he could only lie there and twitch with his eyes wide open and his mouth gaping and feel how the foreign things were mixing with his blood and becoming something completely new that tried to tear and fight its way out of his veins. 

The pain grew steadily as it spread, first into his muscles that pulled tight and twisted his tied down body, and then deeper inside his body where it infected his organs and bones. Eventually he managed to gasp air into his lungs, and when he tried to exhale it along with it came out a long, loud scream. 

He heard the computer monitors beeping and the people around him speaking to each other, but he couldn't pick out anything they were talking about. He screamed his lungs empty, then gasped and gasped and gasped until he had enough air to scream again. 

O'Brien said something, and then the pain suddenly stopped. 

Gabriel slumped down onto the table, slack in his bounds and panting. 

O'Brien spoke: “Well that was a much better reaction already.” He sounded gleeful, and his team responded with agreeing mumbling. “I believe we can mark model #35 as a step into the right direction. Let's get back to work.”

Gabriel didn't have the strength or the interest to ask anything, and no one spoke to him. They cleaned up their equipment, someone mopped the floor, Gabriel was covered with hospital paper and pushed back into the corner, and then the lights were off. He was left there again. 

This became a cycle. Gabriel lay alone in the dark, listening to the pipes and trying to keep himself sane by imagining conversations with dream-people. Sometimes he was there in the basement long enough that he got the odd visitor who came in to switch him a fresh iv-bag, but nothing more than that. 

Then out of the blue O'Brien and his team would be back and they conducted more tests and operations. Gabriel never knew what, and his tactic against them was to act like a corpse and never make eye-contact, never speak and so never give anyone any tools against him. 

What worried him was that they didn't seem to want any. When in a notably good mood O'Brien sometimes greeted Gabriel, but no one else said anything, and no one made any attempt to probe him for information. It seemed like they were wearing him down and using him for God knows what on the side so he would speak right away when they'd finally show their cards and ask. 

Gabriel was cut. He was stitched back together. He was probed with needles and plastic pipes and pumped full of whatever was the poison of the day, and amplifiers came up over and over again, and each time they felt different but hurt just as much. Each time they came last, they were tested, he was monitored and then cleaned up and left in the dark. 

The room smelled damp, and the scent of blood and pus lingered.

He had no idea how long he had been there. There were no windows and no clock or any other means of keeping track of time. There was only the endless, cold dark, then artificial lighting and latex-gloved hands on him and poison in his veins. His rhythm was isolation and pain. It was like he was strapped on a wheel that just kept turning and turning, heavy and never-ending.

Gabriel lost count at how many times he had been stored and how many operations he had been subjected to. He was fairly certain that the members who partook in cutting and probing him changed, but O'Brien was always there, always mellow and vaguely interested in whatever he saw in his meters and under the microscope, and his insufferable calmness made the room feel a bit more like a middle-school classroom each time he leaned over Gabriel and glanced him over with calculating eyes. 

The wheel just kept on turning, and what made Gabriel shiver in the dark more than the endlessness of it all was just how meaningless it was. Whatever they cut healed, and every blood-sample was made up for in the matter of days, Angela had taken care of that. Gabriel felt a strange disconnection from his body that was subjected to all of this but always healed whereas his mind burned with shame and humiliation, dreaded pain before it started, and made him cry with loneliness every time he was left in the dark. 

His body felt strange, like a foreign object he had slightly detached his soul from after all the tubes and needles and liquids had been added to it. In a way the always present iv-needle, the tube and the pouch at the end of it were more a part of his body than his soul was anymore, and during the dark hours alone Gabriel wistfully thought that he wouldn't have minded if the last thread tying his soul to his body snapped and he'd just float into the void. Meanwhile his body remained here, strangely swollen and full of cold, numb spots that couldn't be real because they weren't consistent. Sometimes he lost his form entirely, like all sensation had vanished from his nerves, and sometimes only his flesh seemed to melt away, leaving only an aching skeleton, hollow and yet still somehow alive. 

Gabriel hoped they'd start asking him questions soon so he could maybe get it over with. Perhaps they'd deem him useless and shoot him. Perhaps he'd get his head sawed off and used as a prop for Talon to shock UN or some other enemy of theirs. Honestly he didn't care, he might even trade away some information if they'd let him go or kill him afterwards. Death was calling to him like a siren in the darkness, singing how he could join it there, and after all, whatever secrets he'd spill for Talon wouldn't hurt anyone he cared about, and then he'd be dead, just like Jack was.

He didn't know if it had been weeks or months or years when he finally had enough of slashing and probing, and when O'Brien with his team of eager students ready to get their hands and knives on the frog once again forced him back into the light, he turned his head towards O'Brien and sought eye-contact. 

“What do you want?” he spat at him through his teeth. Giving up was going against his nature no matter how tired he was, no matter how ready he was to cut the thread and stop existing, but what had to be done had to be done.

O'Brien looked politely questioning at Gabriel's question. “I'm sorry?” he asked.

“I said,” Gabriel forced out, a bit louder now, “What. Do you. Want? I've had enough of this, I've had enough of being your little science project or whatever the hell you're doing. What do you want?”

The others stood by them in silence. Their ant-like fussing had stopped for once, and they were all staring at O'Brien. 

“I'm afraid you must be more specific, Mr. Reyes,” O'Brien said. 

“You said you wanted answers, but you aren't asking me any questions,” Gabriel impatiently said. His own voice was painful in his throat, he hadn't drank anything the entire time he had been there or used his voice in a long time. “Now I'm offering. What do you people want?!”

O'Brien chuckled and had the nerve to look apologetic. “Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Reyes. I must have given you the wrong impression in the beginning. You see, yes we do want answers, but none that you know. We already have all the means to get all the answers we want, from your body. As a person I'm afraid you're all but useless to us.”

It was like a lifeline that was supposed to be tied onto something came back to him when he pulled at it, slack and useless. Gabriel was too stunned to speak, and it must have shown on his face, because O'Brien chuckled again.

“You have technology in your system, and whatever the US army's science department put into you during the First Omnic Crisis certainly makes you resilient breeding ground for our project,” he said. “Dr. Ziegler might have kept her tech to herself, but we here at Talon are resourceful. We'll not only get it, but also improve upon it.”

Gabriel's breath was coming in short gasps again, and he could feel cold sweat on his brow. Whatever he was grasping wasn't any help to him. “Then... If you don't need me... Just kill me then. You'll get everything in my body and you could perhaps make pretty organ jars too, you know, to decorate your mad scientist lab a bit,” he managed to force out of his sore throat, and with minimal stammer. 

O'Brien huffed a small, polite laugh. “Ah, you never run out of jokes, do you, Mr. Reyes?”

“Been accused of that,” Gabriel said, “someone married me for my jokes, though.”

O'Brien rolled his eyes and seemed thoughtful for a moment. “Well, I must admit that it would be more convenient if we could put you in jars and not have to deal with you, but then again... Well, in a way we will get everything we want out of your corpse.”

Gabriel didn't have time to think of a snappy answer, because O'Brien reached under his lab coat and into his belt, and a holster made a very familiar sound when it popped open. He pulled out a black hand-gun, clicked the safety off, turned the muzzle towards Gabriel and pulled the trigger. 

The room echoed with three powerful roars as the gun went off, the mouth-flame flashing even with the bright lights, and the bullets sank into Gabriel's chest and stomach. They drilled into his flesh, tearing and burning while they went, and the sudden pain punched the air out of him. He was shocked, staring wide-eyed into the bright light right above him, gasping shallowly and trembling with three holes in his torso, warm blood filling them up before pooling onto the surface and leaking onto the table. 

Gabriel was far too experienced a soldier to fool himself to think these weren't killshots. He felt hot metal wreaking havoc in his gut, and blood was leaving him like out of a spring, and he felt almost wistful when he waited for his consciousness to fade. 

And then it didn't. He was dizzy, but instead of sinking further into the fog his mind became clearer, and the pain in his body stopped spreading. On the edges of pain something else was happening, something he hadn't ever felt before, and it was spreading everywhere. At first he thought he was growing numb or that blood was circulating somehow differently, but the buzzing sensation grew stronger and more definitive, and then it wasn't just a numbing buzz but crawling. The sensation was small creatures and thousands upon thousands of tiny feet, and thousands upon thousands of tiny maws gnawing him, crawling and eating at him as if he was something lifeless and hollow they were turning into a hive. Gabriel stared at the ceiling with wide eyes and gasped. Whatever was inside of him felt alive, they were definitely alive, small and many and fussing and working, and while they crawled and gnawed the pain eased. Bullets were pushed out of him, he felt them moving through his flesh and then he felt them rolling off his chest and stomach, and in one speeding, terrifying moment Gabriel realized that they weren't bugs and he wasn't a hive, they were parasites and he was a host. 

“What have you done to me?” he managed to force out, shocked and frightened, and how small and trembling his own voice came out frightened him even more. 

“We?” O'Brien said, calm as ever, “we have barely done anything, just honed and upgraded some bits, added a little volume, that's all. The magic ingredient here is just you, Mr. Reyes, you and your government's mystery enhancements and Dr. Ziegler's nanotechnology.”

There was a constant sound of puffing and wheezing, and distantly Gabriel could tell it was coming from him, he was short of breath and hyperventilating as if he was having an asthma attack, and at the same time some very far-away echo of his rationality informed him that he was most likely having a panic attack. “They're – They're – They're eating me,” he said, a feeble attempt to make someone, anyone, care about him and his distress, to make it stop. 

“No, they are eating what is dead,” O'Brien corrected him like a particularly slow student, “you're not hosting anything hostile, Mr. Reyes. You're breeding ground for new life.”

Gabriel shook his head weakly as much in denial as he was hoping to shake off anything alien from his head. “I don't want to,” he gasped. 

O'Brien harrumphed. “Well, it's not like gifts are given with expectations of gratitude in mind,” he said, directing his words more to his team than to Gabriel. “This is immortality, Mr. Reyes. You are incredibly lucky to have all those special gifts, all those opportunities, and this is what they result in. Look, look at the miracle you are!” He reached for the light above the table and pushed it aside, rearranging the lamps and pulling something else forth. At the end of a double-jointed metal appendage was a large, square mirror. He brought it right above Gabriel and tilted it so he could look at himself lying on the table. 

What he saw on the mirror's surface burned into his memory. There lay a naked man, bound onto the table but he was a man only in vague shape but definitely not in form. He was a man with golden brown skin and four limbs, but with the level of injury his body had sustained he shouldn't have been alive. In some places the skin was gleaming with sweat and in some places covered in crusty gore, and all across the body ran deep cuts and heavy bruises that had left a clear dent in the flesh. Some of the cuts gaped open and red but not bleeding like on a cooled kill, some trickled clear fluids and white bones shone through, and some where moving and living the life of their own. 

The bruised, gutted man on the table was barely recognizable as a human, full of cuts and wounds and holes made by needles, stuck full of tubes and sensors. Some of his veins were clearly visible on his brown skin where it hadn't been torn and peeled off the red flesh, shining through black and sickly. The remaining skin was gleaming feverish and sick, some places had only patched of it left, all black and leathery after fire, and around the red cuts and shining bones were spots that were either red with infections or sunken in, black and damp.

The man was full of pain and death, but all those open wounds, blackened veins and rotted spots were swarming with life, something black and alive and consisting of things so small it looked like liquid, and they had taken over everything from the man's toes up to his thighs and belly, his chest and arms and all the way up to his head and face, where two wide and terrified eyes with darkened whites and red irises looked back at Gabriel. 

He didn't know when he had started screaming, and couldn't make it stop either. 

After that the pattern changed. He wasn't strapped onto the table anymore, and he got some clothes to wear, but that did very little to what had already been destroyed. Clothes didn't protect him from what they had reached, and most of the time his shifting body was beyond any decency just by existing. It belonged to a creature, not a man. 

Gabriel didn't care anymore, but O'Brien and his team kept talking to him anyway. They were moving on to the tests and figuring out the limits of his new and evolving abilities, or at least Gabriel thought he had heard someone say that, he wasn't sure anymore. After he had successfully survived and recovered from three bullets into his gut he didn't receive large amounts of nanobots anymore aside from a few update dozes, but spent the most of his time recovering from whatever damage was inflicted upon him. He fixed his bones, he grew back flesh, he mended deep wounds cut into him, and he stayed alive beyond what he could have ever endured.

His mind drifted. He hung from the ceiling of the basement, fastened from his wrists and his feet barely touching the floor. The muscles from his arms and back protested, they screamed in agony and cramped, and somewhere on the edges of Gabriel's consciousness someone was always taking notes and making suggestions. 

Electricity did something strange to him, and while current was springing through his body and his skin smelled when it burned Gabriel felt his body doing something even more disgusting than transforming or staying alive, he felt it turning into liquid and dissolving until the electroshock relented and his body pulled itself back together. 

There was no end point. He didn't care anymore. He let his mouth hang open and the cries come out, nothing he did had any affect on anything around him anyway. It made no difference if he spoke or if he screamed, nobody paid any mind to him and nobody reacted. His voice made no difference and eventually he stopped trying and caring. Even his thoughts were few and far between, and Gabriel started to doubt if there even was anything besides the pain and his body. He was his body and only his body, a physical being that lived against law and nature, and when his body dissolved and fell apart there was nothing but the void, no voice calling for him from the other side and no light to follow. He didn't have a voice, he didn't have a mind and he didn't have death. He had only his body, a lump of flesh that kept rotting and coming to life in cycles, and after a while he came to a conclusion that he didn't have a soul, and never had.

There was only flesh, and flesh knew only pain. 

O'Brien kept talking to him even though he was fairly certain he couldn't grasp all of his words from time to time, but the familiar voice was firmly linked to the hum of the machine used to give him electric shocks, and sometimes Gabriel thought clearly enough to understand what he was saying.

The man was a picture of a scientist whose research was giving wanted results. Immortality was in his grasp, he said, hanging from the ceiling right in front of him like a tendering carcass. He was excited, and according to him so were other branches of Talon. 

“You are transforming, Mr. Reyes, and you are a very valued asset to us,” O'Brien said, the machine humming and spreading around a scent like a dusty space heater. “I hope you won't hold these inconveniences against us when we are finally done getting your new form fully out of this cocoon phase. The results all look very promising, and your abilities might very possibly exceed our expectations.”

The sparkling metal tip at the end of the cord attached to the machine made contact with Gabriel's lower back, making his entire body jolt and feeling like a hammer had hit him in the back of his head. The sickening nausea and burning pain made him moan weakly as his body twitched with aftershocks and tried not to liquidize. 

O'Brien kept talking: “This is only temporary, so don't worry. You are not a person anymore, Mr. Reyes. You are a maggot. A little, helpless maggot that can only wiggle around.”

Gabriel twitched in and struggled in his bounds when another cramp hit across his back, his feet scrambling under him and only his toes brushing the cold tile floor.

O'Brien laughed good-naturedly. “Ah, yes, a little bit like that. Don't worry, little maggot. We will turn you into a fly. Eventually.”

It was impossible to think. Gabriel didn't remember words or what his internal voice sounded like, and time became even more meaningless than it already was in the windowless basement, the mockery laboratory he now lived in. This was his home. 

At some point someone had turned a radio on, and after that it was always on. Something was always on, but never music. It was always someone's voice talking with the passion of a preacher and tearing apart whatever was the topic of the day. The declarations and rants became a part of his existence down in the basement, as ordinary as the testing sessions and iv needles and regular showers from the hose. 

The preaching was loud and constant noise, thick and punishing to the ears and full of unrestrained emotion. It was about betrayal, the failure of others, silencing the excuses of those who were in favor of the unnatural order of man and machine as equal, silencing those who used power. It was about putting an end to the freak shows and disbanding the criminals, and fighting for something, something that was as simple and yet so vague like peace and order and a better world. 

The noise was there and Gabriel paid little mind to it, accepting it as one of the things he couldn't affect. He hung there and drifted between painful waking hours and empty dreams. 

Once more he woke up on a table under a bright light and instantly knew this time it was different. He was not bound but couldn't move, and the pain he felt was deep and constant. It made him feel wave after wave of nausea and filled his head with red fog that allowed room only for a sense of confusion and the attempt at questioning where the pain was coming from.

There was a team of doctors above him, all four wearing surgeon's attire with the exception of surgical masks that were replaced by plastic faceguards. They were handing each other tools such as scissors and knives, but one was holding large clippers that very closely resembled hedge-trimmers, and when Gabriel lifted his head the little he could manage, he saw the clippers going inside his chest, snapping a rib after rib loose from the sternum. 

He was open from his collar down to the pubic bone, and before him opened a cavity of red flesh, pale, pinkish and sickly blue organs, white bone and the black swarms of nanobots maintaining his vital functions. With the swarming bots and the cage of his ribs he looked like a beehive cracked open, a sight that he recognized as himself but at the same time rejected.

He let his head thump back on the table, and the combination of pain and the sight he had witnessed made him gag. His stomach had nothing in it, and so only a mouthful of water and acid bubbled up, leaking from the corner of his mouth, down his cheek and into his hair-line.

This was wrong, he knew. He should say something, correct this misunderstanding and set things right. 

“I'm not dead,” he coughed out of his sore throat. 

No one seemed to have heard him, and the operation just carried on as if he was a corpse. That wasn't right.

“I'm not dead,” he whispered again. “I'm not dead.”

There was no response from anyone, only tools were passed back and forth and the work carried on. He could feel latex-gloved hands on his body and inside his chest, touching things he hadn't ever been aware of before. He stared above him into the bright light that he couldn't even pretend anymore was a gateway out of there. He was acutely aware of his hands lying flat on the table and his fingertips brushing against the metal surface, weak but sensitive. He tried to squeeze his hands into fists, but lacked the strength to make them do anything besides curl a little bit. The taste of acid still lingered in his mouth and burned in his throat. 

The radio was still on, blasting its preach as loud as ever. The enemy must be DEALT WITH, those who FAILED TO PROTECT brought forward and MADE RESPONSIBLE. The noise felt like a needle straight into the ear, all the way through the eardrum inside the skull. 

The operation was completed eventually, and everything was drawn out of his carcass: Probes, clamps and one big metal apparatus that had held his chest cavity open, but after that no one made a move to put anything back together. Even through the buzz of pain Gabriel felt a sting of fear and wondered if he was about to be left open like a cracked beehive. But it turned out that nothing needed to be done. Of course not. He could already feel it, the swarm working and mending everything, bending his bones back to where they belonged and turning what ever the tubes and iv-bags where feeding them into new flesh. Slowly the pain relented and blood dried on him, but his strength didn't return. He just lay there like a gutted fish, his fins barely flinching and the fishermen working around him, fully confident that he wasn't going anywhere.

The noise of the radio quieted down slightly, and someone spoke over it: “You're still here? Hurry up and pack up, people, we're moving! And clean that up.”

Acknowledgments were given, and the people made haste, Gabriel could tell by their footsteps. But what he hadn't realized was that by “that” the person in charge had meant him. 

A splash of chilly water from a hose washed over him quickly, rinsing away blood and other fluids. He was about to gasp at the unexpected feeling, but no sound or air left his throat. 

Then there were two pairs on hands on him, one of them taking a steady hold around his ankles, and the other lifting his arms above his head and holding his wrists together. With some effort he was lifted up from the table, and slowly carried towards the other side of the room. The two men carrying him were breathing heavily but not overtly so, and both of them held on very tightly.

Without support Gabriel's head lolled back and left him staring at the world upside down. He saw the wet floor and the dark corners of the room as well as the feet of the people carrying him, and then his eyes caught something in the direction where they were shuffling to and his blood stood still in his veins. 

On the floor in one dark corner was a coffin. It was plain, made of wood and unpainted, but he recognized a coffin when he saw one, and this one was a little over six feet long, it had white cushions inside and most disturbingly, a lid resting on its side. 

Gabriel shook his head a little bit as they came closer. He wasn't dead, he didn't belong in a casket, he wasn't supposed to be buried! He tried to open his mouth and tell it to the men carrying him, but his own tongue refused to form words, instead just laying paralyzed inside his mouth, dead and useless. This wasn't supposed to happen, he wasn't supposed to enter the dark down under while he was still conscious and thinking, only dead things belonged in graves.

They stopped besides the coffin, and on the count of three the men lifted him over the edge of the coffin and into it, and let him thump on the cool white cushions inside. A small, frightened wheeze was all that came out of Gabriel mouth as he tried to protest, and then the lid was placed above him and he was trapped inside the darkness. 

He stared at the wooden lid above him, more knowing it was there than actually seeing it in the dark. _This can't be happening_ he thought and shook his head on the cushions the little that he could. Inside the wooden box he felt trapped and suffocating, but it was the claustrophobia that was making his chest feel like it was trying to crush into itself. 

_I'm not dead. I'm not dead. I am alive. I'm still alive._ He kept repeating to himself inside his head, but whatever bounced around inside his head was meaningless. A box for dead things was where he had been thrown into, and there he lay. 

A box for dead things. Things that had been cut off and forgotten. Things that were rotting away and turning into dust. And yet he knew his body wouldn't do that, even if it was dead. It would just fix itself over and over again, and he would never be free from it. He wished someone would set the whole thing on fire so he could burn away with it. 

It was dark and cold for a long time. There was nothing to see and nothing to feel, only the darkness to exist in and the ever present confinement of the coffin, its walls brushing against his arms and his feet hitting the lid when he shifted. 

The nothingness became his reality and eventually transcended the limits of his body. He had no soul inside his flesh shell and the void filled the empty space like water the hull of a sinking ship. He forgot the limits of his physical being, drifted away with the void and let his body follow. It felt like becoming one with nothingness, and what he desperately wanted was just that. To become thinner and thinner until he was no heavier than air, and then be torn apart by the slightest of breezes and vanish. Death would finally claim him and snuff out the little consciousness he had left.

Or maybe it already had and he only needed to let it happen. His body was clinging onto life and defying nature with its unnatural life-support machinery, and if only he could turn it off he could finally stop existing, and rot and later dust would fill this casket. 

He dreamed about it. Dreamed about crossing the final line instead of hanging above it by a string, and finally completing his transformation. 

_I am dead_ , he thought. 

Then someone pushed the coffin lid open and light struck him, doing away with the darkness and forcing him back into his body. The bright, warm light felt like an assault to his eyes that had gotten used to darkness but despite the pain he still craved it like he had been starving all this time and never noticed it.

Gabriel let out a pained groan and tried to sit up. He took a deep breath of fresh air and turned his face towards the light so bright, comforting and beautiful it could have been the sun itself, and he felt his eyes watering and tears rolling down his cheeks when he tried to force his numb body to sit up and reach towards the light. He groaned again but it sounded more like a whimper, and hearing his own voice so weak made him want to wail like a newborn, and in a way it would have been fitting: The blessed light and fresh air welcoming him and calling him out of the coffin felt like he was born again.

And there surrounded by all that light was a woman he didn't know, smiling sweetly at him. She had light brown skin, a round face and dark hair with gray streaks, she was regarding him with her warm dark eyes, and when she spoke, she spoke in Spanish. 

_“Good morning, Gabi. How is my darling boy feeling?”_ she asked. _“Would you like something to drink?”_

Gabriel stared at the gentle woman in wonder and confusion, and then dropped his gaze to her hands: she was offering him a glass of orange juice. His gaze flicked back to her face, doubtfully measuring the woman but getting back only a loving gaze and a reassuring nod. He reached towards the glass, but his grip on it was too weak to hold it and bring it to his lips, so the woman helped him. She helped him to tip the glass and drink, and while he swallowed down the sweet liquid she smiled approvingly and gently stroked his cheek like she would a child's. 

“ _There we go,_ ” she said when the glass was empty. “ _Would you like to get up and go to your room now? You need to get rest._ ”

Gabriel was confused. He couldn't quite tell where he was and why, but his mind was trying to scramble together something. “ _Why?_ ” he asked.

The woman smiled down at him, full of affection and understanding. “ _Because you're sick, my darling. You need to get rest._ ”

Gabriel didn't know if he had nodded or agreed in some other manner, but he was helped up and out of the box, onto his feet and then towards the door. The woman almost cradled him as he weakly staggered by her side, and he couldn't help but to lean into her warm side and touch, the first tender touch he had known in what felt like forever. 

She walked him into a corridor, around a corner and then into another room. It was like being transported into another world. It was his room, the woman told him, and he instantly felt like he knew the yellow wallpaper and the little bed with soft sheets and a pillow, and he let the woman lay him down on the mattress where he curled up. He smelled fresh laundry and wind on the sheets, and pressing his face against a pillow after everything was enough to bring another wave of tears into his eyes. 

The woman knelt on the floor next to his bed and hummed a song in Spanish that Gabriel didn't know. 

“ _You need to get some rest now, Gabi,_ ” she said after the song ended. “ _After you have slept we need to visit the doctor again, alright?_ ”

That got Gabriel's attention and he opened his eyes again, already drifting towards sleep. “ _Why?_ ”

The woman gave him another of her kind, pitying looks and stroked her knuckles across his cheek. “ _Because you are sick. The doctor will help you get better. Don't worry about it too much._ ”

He didn't worry.

But perhaps he should have. The woman didn't make him leave his room without a glass of juice, his pills and his shots, but the doctors they visited felt oddly familiar. The operations all felt like routine and sometimes he thought he recognized someone, but before he could think too much about he received another doze of something via an iv-needle and couldn't think too much about anything.

The doctors kept the radio on at all times, and the noise it made felt almost as physically painful as the countless exams and samples and treatments he had to go through. 

He didn't understand any of it, he just bore it like he was told to, hoping it would amount to something in the end. 

Something, anything. A purpose. Or just an end to all the pain. 

The woman who had raised him from the dead always left him when the treatments began, but when she came back the pain ended. 

No matter how hard or cruel things seemed, when she came back and put her hand against his cheek the pain was gone, and Gabriel loved her more and more each time. Her soft hands, her encouragements, the glass of juice and her stern voice, all of it. She made him feel safe and cared for again, and she would always take him back to his room where he would get rest and forget all about the pain. 

“ _Who are you?_ ” he asked her one day when she helped him back to his bed.

The woman looked at him with slight surprise. “ _You are really out of it today, Gabi. Don't you know your own Grandmother?_ ”

For a moment his head hurt, and then. Ah yes, yes of course. Of course he did. His Abuela who was taking care of him when he was sick and abandoned, Abuela who brought him juice and meds and who made the pain stop, Abuela who helped him from the outside into his room. He loved his Abuela. 

He smiled at Abuela, and she smiled back. She had her little notebook in her hands, and she made a small note there before putting it away into the breast-pocket of her lab coat.

“ _Now, I have something special for you today, Gabi,_ ” she said suddenly. 

“ _What is it?_ ” He felt excited despite his exhaustion and the dizziness his medication made him feel.

Abuela smiled mischievously at him, reached under his bed and pulled out a box of a jigsaw puzzle. She lifted the box and turned it so Gabriel could see the picture on the cover. 

“ _A puzzle!_ ” she chirped. 

Gabriel tilted his head and regarded the box. It had a painting of a garden on it and it was indeed beautiful, but he didn't know what was so special about this game. 

Abuela seemed to sense his thoughts, because she raised an eyebrow at him and laughed. “ _You think this is nothing special, don't you? Well don't. Let's build it together. Let's build a picture together, just you and me. Who knows how it's going to turn out to be in the end. Aren't you excited to know what the picture will be?_ ”

Gabriel felt himself nodding along Abuela although he didn't quite understand what she meant: The picture was right there on the cover, so of course it was going to look like that. And yet he had a feeling there was something more at play here, as if a puzzle completed together with Abuela had something special to it that wouldn't exist if he completed an ordinary puzzle on his own.

“ _We'll complete it together, and then we'll know the truth. Won't we, Gabi?_ ”

“ _Yes._ ”

“And after we have finished it, we will take it apart too. That's the magic of a puzzle. You can complete it, take it apart and build it again. The picture is perfect every time.”

Gabriel began to see why this was such an exciting game to play. He sat up on his bed, and Abuela pulled the small table behind her closer to Gabriel's bed. Abuela opened the box, turned it upside down and spread the puzzle pieces on the table.

She snapped her fingers. “ _Now I need you to pay attention, Gabi._ ”


	9. Fear and loss

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, dear readers!   
> Thank you all for your kudos and comments on the previous chapters. I updated the tags on the fic to better match it, both in good and evil.
> 
> This is the second last chapter, everyone. We're almost there at the end of the line. Wow, what a ride.
> 
> These last two chapters are very dear to me, and they a lot of material that were among my very first ideas and what made me write this thing in the first place.

“What is my fault? What's going on, Reyes? Reyes?!” Jack demanded while Reyes was putting distance between them, and in his voice was a new tone that Jack hadn't heard all night: Fear.

The only sound coming from Reyes was his fast, hissing breathing and an occasional step in some direction. He seemed to wobble on his place like whatever was going on took so much focus that standing was difficult and he only took a step when he needed to correct his posture so he didn't fall. He was mostly silent for a long while.

Then suddenly he broke that silence by taking an audibly deep breath and letting it out in a long, piercing howl of agony that carried out to the valleys, echoed around them and made Jack jump. It was a cry of suffering so deep it barely sounded human, as if whatever had taken over him had forced his jaw open and ripped the sound from his throat. Reyes wailed his pain into the night, and after he ran out of breath he fell silent again.

Jack heard Reyes staggering about and breathing heavily, its rhythm bordering on hyperventilation. He heard him wandering about, first closer to the car and even bumping against its side as if he didn't see it there, and then further away onto the road. 

“Reyes?” Jack called to him, hoping to reach him or at least prompt a response so he could better keep track where he was, but the only answer he got was more wobbling footsteps dragging on the pavement and muffled groaning. 

Something was going on, that much was obvious, but the situation was odd enough to make Jack pull a blank on possible explanations and he felt the back of his neck tingling at the unknown threat. He was lingering on his place, torn between trying to make contact with Reyes and get him talking again, and making his way back to the backseat and to his rifle. His hand lay on the hood of the car and he didn't move. 

Reyes' groans had been muffled only seconds ago like he was gritting his teeth despite his labored breathing and gasping, but now they were increasing in volume. He wasn't only groaning or quietly murmuring, he was wheezing and moaning under his mask, and the leather of his coat fluttered and groaned with his abrupt tosses and turns. 

Jack made a decision about a course of action. He called out: “Reyes? Reyes, what's wrong? What's going on?”

He got no response, only stammering breathing that was now definitely hyperventilation and broken cries in the midst of harsh wheezing. If the direction where the sounds were coming from wasn't so consistent Jack would have sworn there was someone else making those miserable noises, not the ruthless mercenary he had talked with all night.

Jack stepped further towards the side of the car, towards the sounds of Reyes whining and stumbling about. He was coming closer again, and Jack heard a heavy thump against the car when the other man all but collapsed against it.

“This is your fault,” Reyes managed so say between his heavy gasps, but his words lacked bite. His voice was small and shaky, and then he was swept along whatever spiral he was being tossed around by and didn't say anything more. 

“What is? Talk to me,” Jack urged, but only distressed whining answered. 

Reyes collapsed further down, and the talons of his gauntlets scratched against the side of the car with a hideous noise. He was mumbling to himself in a chocked-up voice but with enough edge that Jack was able to detect the volatile note in it and didn't dare to approach him in case he decided to lash out.

“This is all your fault,” Reyes muttered, “all your fault. Everything was in order before.”

“And now?” Jack pressed. 

Once again there was no response, but a long, shuddering intake of breath followed by a quiet pause, then an equally trembling release of breath. Feet kicked the ground and leather groaned. 

“It's all in pieces,” Reyes whispered as if speaking to himself, his voice full of shock and frightened awe. “So much of it is... _gone_. It's all so... so dark, Jack, it's dark and empty and I will – “ he paused to take shallow gasps in a way that sounded almost compulsive. He swallowed thickly and a choked back grunt left his throat, “I will disappear in it, it will take me and drown me – I will – disappear – “ Words sounded painful and they threatened to drown in all the gasps and whines and hardly made any sense in the first place. 

Something had been shaken loose in Reyes' head, Jack decided. That was the only option that made any sense, and something deep and dark was now making Reyes run in circles like a confused, shot deer that couldn't figure what had hit him. He acted as if he was in physical pain, like the memory that someone had tried to wipe from his mind was the bullet that had hit him, and Jack felt relieved. He couldn't help it, but under his worry and preparations to fight was relief that yes, Reaper was Reyes, he was alive and here with him. 

On the ground Reyes kicked his feet again, his head made a soft thump when he let it hit the car door, he cried out, and something in Jack broke. 

He let go of the hood of the car and took two long strides towards the cry. He dropped down onto his knees next to Reyes and carefully extended his hand towards him, searching for his shoulder. His hand touched the hard seams of the leather coat, but he was on his mark and found Reyes' shoulder easily. Reyes didn't flinch or otherwise react to the touch, but he was shaking and his shoulders jumped every now and then when he let out a broken sound that this close Jack could recognize as muffled sobbing. He wished he could see his face and tell if he was indifferent or just so deep in shock that the contact didn't register to him, but with his limited senses Jack pushed forward anyhow. He moved his hand across the other's shoulder and towards his neck where his fingers finally touched skin that was wet with what he assumed was sweat and something thicker, maybe blood. 

“Hey... Hey, Reyes,” he called, a gentle murmur that he hoped would reach him or even calm him down a bit, “you need to relax. You need to breathe.”

“Don't... Don't fucking touch me,” Reyes snapped and hiccuped. 

“You're not gonna disappear,” Jack said, “you're right here with me, in the real world.”

Reyes managed a broken laugh in the midst of all the upset and crying. “Fuck off, Morrison.”

Jack reached carefully over with his other hand too, slowly so the other could see his movements and not be startled any further, took a gentle but firm hold of his other shoulder as well and pulled him against his chest. Reyes yielded easily, but the second Jack put his arms around him he clasped onto his elbows with his hands, squeezing with all his might and sinking in the talons of his gauntlets. They didn't pierce the leather of the jacket, but Jack still felt their sting and had to bite his teeth together to pointedly ignore the pain. 

A miserable, hoarse whimper left Reyes' mouth, and Jack held him tighter. Reyes was rigid and heavy in his arms and the talons would eventually dig into his arms, but he lay his head on Jack's shoulder, and Jack squeezed him and pressed his face into the crook of his neck, mask and all. He tried to wrap his arms as tightly and completely around the other as he could, and stroked the back of his head with his left hand. 

Holding him like this made Jack's heart ache, and no matter how awful things were turning or how the embrace had nothing to do with their feelings for each other, he still relished in it all the same. He felt his own heart thump in his chest, painful and sweet.

“Sssh... Ssssh... Okay... Okay. You'll be fine, Gabe. You'll be fine in a second, just breathe,” Jack murmured. Carefully he rubbed his hand in slow circles against Gabriel's back and let his cheek rest against the top of his head. The hood was down, and without it his skin met coarse short hair cut like a slightly overgrown crew-cut.

“Don't,” Gabriel whined against his neck, and Jack assumed he meant the use of his name. Gabriel was beyond communicating anything else, but he still held on tight and pushed his face firmly against Jack's collar, taking deep breaths despite his still shivering body.

Like this Gabriel felt almost small despite the body-armour and his height and weight which were all roughly on even scale with Jack. There was a sort of a sense of calm in that moment and they both stayed as still as Gabriel who was still frozen and shaking and Jack who was holding him could. The quiet of the night enveloped them and even their breathing was loud in it. Jack felt the weight of the armour Gabriel was wearing and his palm mapped the hard plates under the coat.

Then the moment broke when Gabriel jerked away from him and cussed. “Fuck,” he said and stumbled backwards, almost falling away and ending up slightly out of Jack's reach but without even trying to get up from the ground. Perhaps he couldn't. “Fuck,” he said again, louder now and at the same time his voice reached a thin, high-pitched note. “Fucking shit. Fucking hell and Christ god-fucking-damned.” 

Jack was completely lost, and now that Gabriel had pulled back from his arms the almost magical calm of the moment had been broken, and so he had been thrown back into the unpleasant reality that hit him like a slap in the face. “Gabe, talk to me,” he said, but his voice sounded harsher than he had meant to and he immediately feared he was just sending Gabriel further down into the rabbit hole.

Gabriel groaned and grunted, and then Jack heard sharp, fumbling clawing noises. 

“I need to... get the fuck... out of this... _thing_ ,” Gabriel muttered with breaks filled with raspy intakes of air. Judging by his voice he was fighting against the panic but it held onto him tight, and Jack turned his head giving both of his ears a chance to catch the noise coming from the other. 

He caught a quiet creak he immediately associated with leather, and clinking of something small and metal, like knitting needles or – most likely – a small buckle. With that and the scratching Jack suddenly realized that Gabriel was fighting off his mask. Judging by the sounds it was fastened with several straps, and the whole time Gabriel fumbled to get them open he made frustrated, irritated sounds. 

Finally he was done with it, and he gasped for air as if the mask had somehow been suffocating him. Jack expected to hear him fling the mask as far as he could throw it, but nothing indicated that he had let go of it, only gotten it off his face.

“Gabe?” Jack tried again. He still felt tense in the volatile situation as well as exposed and helpless without his visor, but now something else joined the mix with the knowledge that now Gabriel was also himself without the hood or the skullmask. He was there as he was, only barely out of reach, and Jack wanted to see him so badly he felt his throat tightening. 

“Don't fucking call me 'Gabe'. Didn't I fucking tell you already?! Why are you so damn stupid, Morrison?!” Gabriel snapped, his voice thick and stuffy. 

“Yeah, you did, and I don't know about that, but I want some answers,” Jack replied swiftly. He tried to keep his voice level and avoid escalating the situation, but he didn't want to lose this reality-checked, talkative Gabriel either.

“Well maybe I'm not in the mood to give you any. What do you care anyway?” Gabriel snapped back. Some of his fight was already back, and Jack heard him wipe his face from the scruff noise of a hand against facial hair. 

“Come on, don't give me that. We've come this far,” Jack said and couldn't stop some of his impatience leaking through. He was confused and on top of that tired and anxious about his blindness, and he was so close to those answers he had set out to look for. It was just that those answers were so much further from the mark than he had thought possible, and on top of them sat Gabriel like a mad sphinx ready to bounce and run without solving the riddle.

Gabriel was quiet again, but he shuffled on the ground, his boots made dragging sounds against the pavement and the noises grew more intense by every passing second. Soon frustrated sounds coming from the man himself joined in, and more buckles came undone. Gabriel swore under his breath and fought some other part of his costume off. 

“Damn talons,” he hissed, “can't even touch my own face. Shit.”

Jack guessed the gauntlets were coming off now and in passing wondered if Gabriel had mentioned the talons to compensate for Jack's blindness. Bitterly he admitted almost immediately after that it was probably wishful thinking, and that Gabriel was mumbling to himself to keep himself grounded. He used to do that when things got stressful. Jack kept his face carefully neutral. More and more memories were coming up, and now that he had started to call Gabriel by his first name again he had stepped that much closer to him, and switching back now was impossible. 

“Gabe, please. What's going on?” Jack asked and didn't care how he sounded, just that his face gave nothing more away. 

Gabriel was quiet, and his head thumped back against the car. He swallowed. “You have no idea what I've been through. You have _no idea_.” He sounded more bitter than anything else, but the teeth-gritting and frustrated kicking of feet were there in the mix too. 

Jack felt frustrated too. He was this close, he almost knew, and they were stuck. “Yeah. I don't know. You already said that,” he said. 

Gabriel kicked the pavement harder now. “I've been to hell! I've been to _hell_ and you speak to me with that tone?!”

“What else could I do, huh?” Jack snapped back. Was Gabriel looking at him? He wanted to _see_. But even more than that, he wanted to understand. His heart hammered his ribs in anxious longing. “You haven't told me anything! You just...” he fell quiet, uncertain all of a sudden. How out of it had Gabriel been? Did he know how he had acted? Would he believe it if he didn't? “You just... Went all quiet all of a sudden. And then you... walked around and mumbled stuff, and then you... Yelled.”

Gabriel spat. He shifted awkwardly and hissed something to himself again, so he probably remembered and was ashamed of his outbreak. 

Jack pressed on: “And then you wandered around, said some strange stuff and then you cried. How the hell am I going to make sense of that?!”

“Enough!” Gabriel snapped at him and slammed his fist against the car for emphasis. “I know what I did, you don't have to treat me like a lunatic.”

“Well you aren't exactly helping,” Jack scoffed in return. “Hell. What do you mean by hell? Everyone has been through hell.”

Suddenly Gabriel laughed, a surprised, high sound that had a manic edge to it. “Everyone? Everyone's been through hell?” he repeated and sounded odd again. He spat and swore in sudden anger. “ _No one_ has been through what I have! You don't understand! I could tell you every single detail of it, and you still wouldn't! You fucking moron...” 

Jack gritted his teeth and glared in Gabriel's general direction. He hated that the other was right. “Try me. I want to know. I want to try to understand, otherwise this is all for nothing.”

Gabriel laughed again, but this time the sound was clearly frightened. Jack imagined his right leg bouncing and his fingers picking at his cuticles on his lap. “Oh no you don't. You don't want to know, Jackie, I can guarantee that.”

Jack glared at the other again and threw his hands in the air. “Well one thing you are really making sure is that I don't know enough to even be properly confused.”

Gabriel made a weird sound, like a mix between a chuckle and a sob. “That's better for you.”

Jack leaned forward, determined and challenging and couldn't care less if he antagonized the situation. “And I said _try me_.”

Gabriel was quiet, but his boot scratched against the ground and he moved restlessly. He coat made steady noises as it rubbed against the car, and Jack imagined Gabriel rocking himself from side to side. “You left me behind,” he said in a low voice. 

Jack already knew that but hadn't expected it to hurt this much more now. Gabriel chuckled, and Jack wondered how much of his feelings had been visible on his face. 

“You left me long ago before the Fall,” Gabriel added. “You didn't care about Blackwatch as long as you got the results. You didn't even care about the public although you said you did, but you never lifted a finger to reel my division in. You didn't care what we did, and you didn't care what happened to us, to _me_ , as long as we got you what you wanted.” As he spoke, his tone grew more venomous and more harsh by every passing word, and Jack had to keep himself from flinching. 

Gabriel wasn't done: “You left me there. I don't care if you meant it or not, if you didn't want to find me dead, but I was alive, and now I am alive against all nature and order of things. I was made, Jack. I was made into _this_. And you have no idea how things like me are made.”

Jack didn't say anything. They were finally getting somewhere, but the fact that this package was horrific and becoming even more so when the layers peeled back was becoming all too real.

“Haven't you wondered how I work, Jack? Haven't you wondered what makes me tick? I'm sure you have, and sometimes I bet you can smell the rot off me. You were so disturbed when Angela built that Shimada boy a body-shaped life support system, so go ahead and do that towards me as well.”

He fell quiet after that, but the pause was heavy and felt more like a necessity than a voluntary break. He hadn't finished talking yet, but the words seemed to choke him and he had to stop to breathe. Jack didn't say anything. 

Gabriel took a long, audible breath before continuing but that was the only sign he was distressed in any way since his voice was as dark and low as before: “They put things in me.”

Something about that notion was shocking, but exactly how Jack couldn't quite put his finger on it. Maybe it was the invasion implied, or maybe just the simplicity of it and how Gabriel didn't bother to explain it or continue, as if that notion and what it included had everything he had been put through at its purest. 

The shuffle from the coat against the metal of the car continued. Long, slow drags across the surface carried on, and Jack imagined Gabriel rocking himself slowly. It was a strange image to have in one's mind, because Gabriel hadn't had a habit like that before. 

“It's not just Angela's stuff anymore either. And there's more of it. And it's amplified. I wouldn't live for a minute without them,” Gabriel continued. “They tested them and they made me take more of them every time, and then they tested some more.” He paused again. Shuffling continued. “They tested it all on me.”

Jack felt a mix of disgust and serenity. Disgust at the vague suggestions of what Talon had done to Gabriel, but serenity when he got to fit a rational explanation to Reaper, what he was and how we worked. There had been dark moments of sleepless nights when Jack had wondered if Gabriel was really and truly a ghost, a creature back from the grave to haunt those who had wronged him in life. Jack didn't care if he functioned with technology or how completely it had taken over Gabriel's physic, what he cared about was that he wasn't the crazy one. There was an explanation, and it was that the world around them was as mad as ever.

Gabriel laughed breathlessly, compulsively like a reflex trying to ease the tension in the air. “It was torture. It was always torture, no matter how sciency they tried to make it sound or how carefully they wrote the shit-show down. It was torture.”

Jack found himself nodding solemnly. Gabriel was still muttering mostly to himself and it was clear that most of the things were still only in his head, but even from the rough outlines of his six years down under one could draw the conclusion that it had been horrible. 

“Why'd you work for them, then? After all of that?” Jack asked, frowning. He had to ask. 'Just a job among others' Gabriel had said, and yet... Only moments ago something had dawned to him, and it had resulted in a violent rejection of his mercenary persona. Something was still off, and Jack felt a chill down his spine thinking about what he was about to uncover. 

Gabriel let out a low groan as if he was experiencing a headache and didn't response straight away. 

“I know torture,” he said then. “You left me there.” 

That slipped right past Jack's armour and he flinched. He didn't say anything. There was no defense he could make that would ease the blow, not even for himself in his own mind.

“When they captured me you left me there,” Gabriel continued and apparently didn't even expect Jack to contribute to the conversation. “I know the protocol, when a Commander is captured by the enemy the Strike-Commander must be notified, it takes priority over all and any classifications. When they got me, you didn't care. You just abandoned me there. As acceptable collateral, I heard. They told me.”

It took Jack a brief second to get back on track what they were talking about and when he realized it he had to admit that Gabriel had lost him. “'The Strike-Comman –' Gabe, when Overwatch fell I was as good as dead. They buried me. There was no chain of command left, it was all gone – “

“Not that!” Gabriel snapped. “Don't try to mess with me, Morrison! You know what I'm talking about! You left me!”

Jack sat still without a thing to say. Gabriel fumed with anger, Jack could sense it coming from him in waves and he was certain he was being stared at. 

“The mission in Argentina!” Gabriel finally spat. “The Blackwatch mission to investigate and seize a possible Talon base! I was missing for days, Morrison! You could have sent someone, hell you could have come yourself! I was starved and tortured while I was there keeping Overwatch's secrets, _your_ secrets! And you betrayed me.”

There was a sense of finality in Gabriel's voice when he said what he had to say, and Jack sensed he thought he had showed an unbeatable winning hand of cards. But Jack was only more confused now. He recalled the Argentina mission very well.

“Gabe,” Jack started hesitantly, “you were held captive only for a few hours. The Talon cell you exposed was independent and low in the ranks. They didn't even know who you were, and you were alright when your own team pulled you out.” He spoke very carefully, afraid that he would set something off, but what else was there to say but the truth. Jack bit his teeth together and waited.

Gabriel responded with silence again, and not only by not speaking but with all sound coming from him ceasing. It was as if he had completely stilled, frozen in place. 

“No,” he said then, arguing but less forcefully, “no, no I remember being there, on a... table. And they cut me. And asked. Questions. And I didn't – I was there, it was dark. It was a long time. I was there for a long time.” His voice got quieter the longer he spoke, the words further apart and less clear. 

Jack shook his head. “No, you were captive in Argentina for four hours tops, and you were unharmed when you got out. I heard of it, but you were in control the whole time. You were back the next day, and we were – “ he hesitated for a second, “we were together.” 

“No, no it can't be,” Gabriel said, and now there was a note of tread in his voice. He started rocking again. “I _remember that_!” His breathing turned louder and labored again and he swallowed several times. Jack could only sit still and listen. He didn't dare to reach out and try to hold him again. The atmosphere was tense again and he feared anything would set Gabriel off at any second. 

There was a loud slap of skin against skin, so sudden that Jack jumped a bit.

“Stupid,” Gabriel mumbled. Another slap. “Stupid, _stupid..._ ”

Jack realized Gabriel was hitting himself, either on his cheeks or on his forehead, and an intense desire to reach over and grab his wrists hit him. Something was already going off again, so Jack threw his caution to the wind and tried to intervene. 

“Hey, hey, calm down, Gabe, it's okay,” he said while reaching his right hand towards the other, found his shoulder again and gave him a firm squeeze hoping to ground him. 

“No, no it's not!” Gabriel yelled at him and slapped his hand away. “Don't you understand!? It's all wrong, that's been tampered with too! I don't – I don't remember, that feels real but it's in a wrong place, something else is... Gone... Like the other memory... I don't... Oh, God...”

He made a pained sound, a long whine that slowly turned muffled as he slumped down onto himself, compulsively combing his fingers through his short hair. He sounded like he was chocking while trying to swallow down the other noises coming from his throat, but eventually the hiccuping whimpers bubbled out. 

“I'm sorry,” Gabriel whispered, so quiet that Jack would have missed the words if he hadn't been listening to him so intensively, but even then Jack couldn't be sure Gabriel was really talking to him.

“I'm sorry, I'm so sorry,” Gabriel repeated, now more clearly even though his voice had gotten shaky and thick again. 

Jack dared to reach out again and found Gabriel's shoulder. “What about?” he asked in case he was meant to hear the words.

“I left you when I was there,” Gabriel breathed like he was confessing a shameful secret. “I left you. The first thing I did was to leave you, I'm sorry, I'm sorry I didn't – I didn't mean to, I just didn't want you there like that – “

Jack shook his head in frustration. Gabriel was mumbling something strange again and he didn't know what, but he had a hunch they were back at their true separation. He burned with curiosity and wanted more answers, but that need was overcome by a need to comfort. “You didn't leave me, you thought I died, remember? I went MIA, Gabe, you too. It's not your fault,” Jack said while rubbing Gabriel's shoulder. 

“No, you don't understand!” Gabriel shouted. “I forgot about you! Thinking about you was too hard so I didn't! I abandoned you in my mind, I buried you there and forgot!”

Jack was at a loss. The confession apparently held an immense weight to Gabriel, but Jack didn't hold it against him. Being tortured was bad enough, you didn't need to grieve your spouse on the side too. “It's okay,” he said plainly, not knowing what else to say but the truth.

Gabriel gave a pained howl at that and slumped down again. “You don't understand...” he muttered. “I wanted to join you. Just, like... wait a moment, I'll be there in a minute. I'll die and we'll meet again. But there was no end. There was just... Dark and then light and dark and light and dark and.... I don't know. It was dark outside but then there was dark inside me too.”

Jack inched closer on his knees until he was right by Gabriel's side. He wanted to put his arm around his shoulders but feared what the sudden sensation of being confined like that would make the other do. He didn't want to disturb the flow of words and emotions coming from him, but didn't want to leave him at the mercy of that current either. 

Gabriel combed his hair furiously and rubbed his face. “It's all in pieces,” he said, “in shambles and all mixed up, I don't know... I can't tell which order is the right one.”

“We're not in a hurry,” Jack said, an empty phrase he hoped fit the situation. 

Gabriel gave a forced laugh but didn't make any other comment, so Jack didn't know if he reacted to him or not.

“It's all so dark and strange and...” Gabriel searched for words. Rubbed his face. Sniffled wetly. “Empty spaces. I turn around and there's just a void there. And then shards of things... And I don't... I can't... It's like a puzzle and I can't – “ he grit his teeth and moaned in misery. “What else is gone?! I don't know! It's just shards and darkness and... Hollow, I am hollow and there are these thoughts and I don't know where they...”

Jack couldn't hold himself back anymore, mostly because he needed to do something and sitting at a respectful distance didn't suit him, but also because he doubted he could make Gabriel feel any worse. He sneaked his arm around his shoulders and pulled him to lean on his side, hoping to ground him at least a little bit. Gabriel didn't react to the contact, not by refusing, tensing up or flinching, he just leaned where he was pulled. 

“You don't understand... You can't understand...” Gabriel mumbled behind his hands, “what they made me, how they made me. Humans aren't supposed to be tampered with like that... But I am and what I am is... I was made, they made me like this, I was transformed – “ And then the flood suddenly cut. Gabriel snapped his mouth shut so hard his teeth clipped together. He was still and tense. 

Jack didn't want to ask, didn't dare, so he stayed carefully still as well.

Gabriel shifted in his hold, turning towards him a little bit. “Those aren't my words,” he said in a small voice. 

Jack didn't respond, didn't even know what he'd say, so he just squeezed him. 

“This is what they did to me, Jack,” Gabriel said in a hoarse whisper. “They have ruined me.”   
He started to cry. 

For a moment Jack didn't react in any way out of shock at this sudden turn. He hadn't heard Gabriel cry openly in years, probably in a decade, and never like this. He had never heard him make quiet, weak little whimpers while sobbing this openly and without restraint. It was the type of crying that would have fitted a freshly grieving mother or a child, but not a grown man like Gabriel. 

Jack fumbled for words that weren't there and settled for squeezing Gabriel against his side. The side of the other man's face brushed against his cheek before pressing down against his neck and shoulder and left behind a wet spot. 

“Okay,” Jack said. “Okay. Okay. Go ahead if you feel like it.” He didn't know what he was saying but he felt like he should say at least something even if it was useless. He felt at loss and weak, so weak he was afraid he was going to start trembling too at any moment. His heart was clenching and aching, and he was dying to wrap both of his arms around Gabriel, gather him into his arms and stroke his hair and back and kiss the crown of his head and do all those things he would have once done. 

But he didn't. It wasn't his place anymore, but still he pressed his cheek on top of Gabriel's head and rocked them carefully on their place. 

It was a rather bizarre situation. They were still sitting on the ground and leaning against the parked car, it was either very late or very early depending on how you looked at things, and they were still mostly wearing their battle gear. Jack tilted his face towards the east where he knew the sun would eventually rise, but saw no light yet. 

“I don't know what they put in my head,” Gabriel said, and Jack was forced to focus on the current moment again. Gabriel's words were hard to understand since his speech came out fairly garbled. “It's all messed up. Every time I try to glance at it there's a void, and I can't get a hold of anything.”

“It'll take some time, that's all,” Jack tried to reassure him. “It'll probably take some time to detox from everything Talon's given you. Who knows what was in that needle I took out.”

“What needle?”

Jack felt a cold rush and felt like he shouldn't have said anything, but the damage was already done. “The one I took out of your arm before I carried you out of that base earlier. There was an iv in your arm.”

Gabriel let out a suffering, miserable whine at that and shuddered. He continued sobbing.

“It's okay, we're out of there now. You're not going back,” Jack reassured him and at the same time realized he would have to personally make sure of that. And he would too, there was no way he would let Gabriel go back to Talon as long as he was still breathing. But at the same time he realized he didn't really have the means to do so: he was a loose cannon himself, he had nothing to take Gabriel back to, nothing to promise him and nothing to give. A crushing sense of weakness came over him and made him hold Gabriel tighter. 

“Back...” Gabriel repeated, “no, no I have to go back.” He sounded more lucid now. He had stopped weeping. “Oh you can be certain I'm going to go back and make them pay, I'll have my shotguns with me, I can't wait to see the look on that smug bastard's face when I point a gun at his stupid, sadistic face – “

The anger was back and Gabriel was struggling back again, and this time he got on to his feet. Jack wanted to hold him back but didn't dare to try, and instead got to his own feet too but kept his right hand against the car. Gabriel was stumbling about, bumping against the car and striding aimlessly, his coat fluttering around him. 

“Gabe. Gabe, calm down,” Jack called after him. 

“Calm down?!” Gabriel yelled at him. “Don't tell me to calm down! There's no way in _hell_ I'll ever 'calm down!'” 

“Where would you even go?” Jack threw back at him. “We're in the middle of nowhere in the mountains! You can't just run around! You have no intel, no plan, and you're clearly upset!”

“Don't talk to me like I'm insane,” Gabriel growled back. He was somewhere around the back of the car, but marched back towards Jack again. “Fine, I'm crazy, I'm absolutely messed up and totally out of it, but I can _think_. I am thinking now, this is me, I exist, and I can do whatever I want!” He spat the words out like a declaration. His voice was still slightly shaky and thick, and Jack wouldn't have been surprised if there were still tears streaming down his face. 

Jack lifted his hands up in a calming gesture. “I know,” he said, hopefully giving the statement enough weight. “I know. I know you're here. But just... Take a moment. You're still upset. You're still detoxing. I destroyed the base we came from. There's nothing there.”

Gabriel slammed his fist on the car. “Don't talk to me like that!” he yelled. “You don't know me either! You must have realized that much already! The man I was is _gone_ , Jack! He _died_! So stop talking down at me like that!”

“Then what am I supposed to do!” Jack shouted back at him. “Leave you here?! Let you go so you can go off like a bomb at some random Talon cell?!”

“'Let me go'?” Gabriel repeated back at him and laughed coldly at that. “You're not keeping me here in the first place, Jack! You don't _have_ me! I am here for now because I decided to let you give your two cents, and I can leave when ever I want to!” 

Jack took a deep breath and raised his hands again. “Okay, okay, sure. Of course you are free to go. But just... Give it a second, okay? Don't just... go.”

Gabriel was quiet for a moment and stood still. Jack interpreted that the situation was defusing at least a little bit, and he hoped Gabriel had let out enough steam for now. 

When Gabriel spoke again, his voice was low and cold. “They will all die.” Jack didn't reply anything to that, just stayed put and listened. Gabriel hummed to himself as if he was weighing a decision. “They will die. All of them, just to be sure. They deserve it. I'll make it just. I'll kill them all, all of them, and then...” The rest of the sentence was left hanging in the air. It was unfinished but had an odd sense of finality in it, the kind that made Jack nervous. 

“And what then?” Jack asked. “After that, what then?”

Gabriel gave a heavy weary sigh at that and didn't respond. He walked around a bit, as aimless as if he was going around in circles and as far as Jack knew he might have been doing just that. Eventually Gabriel wandered back closer to him again, stopped by the side of the car and hesitated. The leather coat groaned and fluttered while he swayed on his place, and eventually he leaned against the car. A moment later Jack turned his back to the car and did the same.

“Do you think your mind belongs to you, Jack?” Gabriel asked quietly. 

Jack recognized a rhetorical question when he heard one, but Gabriel never asked if he didn't expect some kind of participation, so he sighed and relented: “Yes.”

Gabriel sighed again. “And what if I told you someone could reach into your mind and seize your core? Touch your innermost self and twist it?”

Jack felt a sick twist in the bottom of his stomach, and an urge to reach over to Gabriel again flared up. He forced himself to stay still. “That sounds horrible,” he said. “I can't imagine.”

“Hm. Yeah,” Gabriel said, noncommittal, and fell silent again. He took several deep breaths before he spoke again. “Afterwards. You said that. After.”

Jack frowned. “What?”

“You talked about afterwards, when I said I will kill everyone in Talon, everyone who used me,” Gabriel specified. 

“Oh,” was all that Jack had to say. “So I did.”

“After,” Gabriel said, tasting the word, mulling it over. “There's no after for the dead.” 

It was cold. There was a slight breath of wind that chilled Jack to the bone, and he wrapped his arms around himself. “You are alive,” he said. 

Gabriel laughed softly, almost like he pitied him. “Existing is not life,” he said, and his voice was hard and cold compared to the soft laugh.

“You are _alive_. A living being here in this world,” Jack repeated harshly, trying to force the words to sink into Gabriel's mind. 

“No. I was destroyed. Taken apart, buried and woken again,” Gabriel argued back, growing bitterer. “I am full of emptiness, and I don't even know how much I have lost. I don't know what was in these... empty spots. I can't – Gabriel Reyes was killed and put in a coffin, Jack. You buried him, didn't you?”

“No, you stop that right now, don't say that,” Jack snapped and felt suddenly angry. He didn't know why, but he did. His heart beat faster and he tasted something sour in his mouth. “You are _here_! Right in front of me, as real as I am! Whatever you feel doesn't make you dead!”

Gabriel laughed again, a purring sound so soft and fragile and beyond any reach. “Oh, Jackie... Stubborn as ever,” he chuckled.

“Shut it,” Jack snapped, reached out blindly and snatched a hold of Gabriel's arm and squeezed. He squeezed as hard as he could, hard enough to hurt and he hoped the other felt it too. “Feel this?! This is _real_. I am _here_ , and you are here with me!”

Gabriel huffed. “You grieved me, didn't you?”

Jack opened his mouth but no words came out. His throat squeezed shut like he was being strangled, and he grabbed Gabriel's arm even harder. “I missed you,” he forced out. Just a whisper made it, rough and dry. “I _missed_ you. Every day.” 

Heavy silence took over again, and Jack held onto Gabriel's arm the entire time, hoping to communicate the whole weight of his emotions that the words couldn't do. He hoped Gabriel was looking at him and that he could somehow read that and understand how much he meant everything he said and how much of it he couldn't put into words. 

“That much?” Gabriel asked. 

Jack wasn't sure if Gabriel meant what he thought he did, but he knew what he wanted to say: “ _Yes_. Don't go.”

Wind blew over them shaking and shuffling the branches in trees. The night air was fresh and cool. The road under their feet could have as well been endless, so far and alone they were. 

“Death did us apart already,” Gabriel said. 

Jack leaned closer. “No, it didn't. We are here,” he said firmly. “Please get back in the car.”

They stood still like that for a while. The wind picked up and turned from cool into biting before settling into a light breeze again. The night was otherwise silent. 

“Fine,” Gabriel said at last. 

Enormous amount of relief and pure joy flooded Jack, and for a second he thought he was going to cry under the wave. He let out a shuddering sigh of relief and eased his hold on the other's arm. “Good. Good.”

The radio was still on by itself inside even though the engine had died. Jack had already climbed back onto the driver's seat and was fumbling for the light in the ceiling before he realized he couldn't drive, but didn't let that bother him for now. They weren't going anywhere immediately anyway, and just hearing Gabriel getting in and slamming the door shut behind him gave Jack some peace of mind. He had succeeded, he had won Gabriel back for now, he would stay with him for a little while longer.

The light came on and the fog in Jack's vision gained some shape. The outlines of the car came into vision, as did a darker spot of fog in front of him almost in a shape of a man even though he threatened to drown in the darkness of the back of the car where the small light didn't quite reach. 

On the radio a slightly up-beat and simple melody on an electric guitar played. The pure plugging of the guitar was soon joined by the drums, setting a simple classic rock tune.

They sat in silence listening to it without really paying attention to it. Music was a nice filling in the otherwise heavy atmosphere, and in some way it was making the car almost cozy. Jack felt exhausted and let his head rest back and leaned his left arm against the window. He felt mentally drained and rubbed raw and wondered if Gabriel felt the same. They would eventually have to agree on the next move and how to move onward, but taking a little breather now wouldn't hurt. 

A soft male voice was singing, and the song that had begun as an upbeat one turned out to have blue notes in it. _“Valentine is done, here but now they're gone! Romeo and Juliet -”_

“Have you been thinking about me?” Gabriel suddenly asked. 

Jack jumped a little and frowned. He was surprised by the sudden direct question, but Gabriel didn't sound demanding. He was lulled by the song and the long night too, and his voice was low and neutral. 

Jack kept his face angled forward and pondered briefly what he should say, but soon found out he was too tired to give anything but the truth. His feelings were bleeding out of him and there was nothing he could do to make the flow stop. He sighed. “Every day. I never stopped thinking about you, missing you... Regretting how things turned out in the end.”

Gabriel replied with a small agreeing hum. His breathing was calm and deep almost like a sleeping person's, and his voice was coming from a relaxed, slumped back position. “I thought about you too,” he quietly admitted. His voice was blank and soft, and he sounded like he was bleeding too. “Right after the fall I regretted too. We had had so many problems, a falling out... But I wanted to try again, fix things and be us. Even though...” He paused for a moment, rolled his shoulders and sighed. “I knew you had been thinking about the same thing that I had, back then. But I didn't want to be the one to bring up divorce.”

Even now the word cut Jack deep and painful, and he felt his brow drawing together and the corner of his mouth twitching. “Me neither,” he said. It had been in his mind a lot during their last years together, both as a possibility and perhaps a responsible thing to do, but it had tasted too bitter and felt like a defeat. 

“I wanted to be together again so bad,” Gabriel said in that same plain tone. “And the last six years... Hmm. I had other missions, other employments, and you weren't even supposed to be alive... But... I think my final goal has always been to be reunited with you, somehow.”

Jack couldn't argue with that. If anything he related; losing Gabriel had felt like twenty years had suddenly vanished from his life and he was left running with a ticking clock on his head and his remaining fuel leaking out of him. Death had become something to look forward to, and it couldn't come soon enough. To him it sounded like a waiting embrace after a long journey, but hearing that Gabriel had been staggering towards his grave as well made his heart clench. 

The man on the radio sang: _“Baby take my hand - - “_

Gabriel sighed again and let out a quiet hum that had a small smile within it. “We are married,” he said, almost wistfully. 

Jack smiled to himself. “Yes. Yes, we are.”

Gabriel gave a breathless little laugh. “We're together again, like we're supposed to, right? We're together, Jackie, you and me.”

Jack had to smile, he couldn't stop it. He wasn't sure how any of that was going to really work out, but all he could think about was _yes. Yes we are here, together like we were meant to be._

Gabriel shifted on his place, turned a little bit towards Jack perhaps, and his breath shivered. “I won't leave you again. I'll take care of you, Jackie, I promise.”

Jack stopped smiling. There was an odd note of finality in Gabriel's words, and suddenly Jack itched for his visor and rifle again.

He heard a holster being opened.


	10. Swan song

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here we are, at the end of the line. 
> 
> This was a tough one to write on top of the previous one, and I made myself experience human emotions while at it. A friend of mine said I deserve to suffer with my readers, and yeah, that I did. 
> 
> Please enjoy!

Jack listened carefully, and the series of sounds he heard were familiar and distinct and there was no mistaking what they were. He heard a leather holster flipping open, and then something heavy and metallic being pulled back on a track, machinery clicking and metal snapping back into its place. 

Jack felt cold sweat on the back of his neck when he turned his face towards Gabriel and stared into the dark fog. “Gabriel,” he said, slowly and calmly, “that better not be one of your shotguns you're pointing at me.”

“Oh, it is,” Gabriel responded. He was calm and sounded almost apologetic. 

When Gabriel didn't say anything more, Jack started to scramble for his defenses. He licked his lips and raised his brows, gambling for time and acting like the fact that Gabriel had suddenly pulled out a shotgun, loaded it and pointed it at him was more peculiar than anything else. “And why are you pointing a shotgun at me?” he asked.

Gabriel didn't respond immediately, just huffed like the situation was slightly awkward. “You know... Contrary to my reputation, I can die,” he said.

Jack didn't like this side route but played along. His instinct was telling him to raise his hands but he forced himself to stay still, calm and relaxed. “Well, yeah, I figured. Since you're a human.”

“Uh-huh,” Gabriel said. “I just have to destroy my brain, or separate my head from my body. I can take a lot of damage, but not even my miracle bots can make me a new brain if I put a double-barrel in my mouth and blow my brain all over the place.”

“Is that so,” Jack said while trying his hardest to sound level and normal.

“Yeah, that's my situation. I am still a man, and I have my death. That's the only thing that can't be taken away from me.” His voice shook just a little bit, and the gun in his hold rattled slightly.

Jack gave a slow nod but didn't dare to respond right away without weighing his options. On one hand the topic of death seemed risky now, but on the other avoiding it felt just plain stupid. “Sure, your death is yours. No one's taking that away, okay?”

“Uh-huh.”

Silence again. Jack felt like every time they fell silent like it meant setting off some sort of a timer, like an hourglass that was running out of sand, and only by talking he could turn it over and keep the sand running. “Gabriel. Why are you pointing a shotgun at me?” 

“I just told you,” Gabriel said gently, “I'm not leaving you again. We're going together.” 

Jack felt his brows jump up again. “There are lots of places we could go to together.”

Gabriel laughed but it had a sad note in it, and the gun rattled again. “That's sweet of you, Jackie, but no. There is nowhere for people like us to go. There's just one destination.” 

“Us?” Jack repeated. “Is that why you're pointing a gun at me? You're planning to kill us both?”

“Don't worry, Jackie. It'll be quick, I know my guns. And I'll be right behind you, we'll go together and then this will all be over,” Gabriel said, a comforting tone in his voice. He was still steady as a tide, but a new tender edge had appeared in his voice making him sound almost sweet despite the loaded gun in his hands. 

“It doesn't have to be over, Gabe,” Jack replied, desperately trying to reach out to him and solve this, but the immediate threat to his life put a hard edge into his calm voice. “We can walk away from this. We can just go ahead and leave. Nothing's binding us here, you said it yourself, no one needs me back, you won't ever have to go back to Talon, and we're both technically dead. We're free. There's no need for... that.” He nodded towards the shotgun. 

“No, you don't understand,” Gabriel argued. There was a strain in his voice like he was in pain. “There's no point in wandering around like that! There's nothing to do or see, and there's nothing I can do that is truly of my own will anymore. Didn't you listen to me, Jackie? There's no me anymore, I am tainted and ruined, and only death will set me free.” He fixed his hold on the gun, and the dark fog of Jack's vision swirled when he re-aimed it. “Didn't you just tell me how much you missed me? How much you want us to be together again? It's time to show it, Jackie.”

“I don't want to die with you, Gabe. I want to live with you,” Jack said firmly. It was literally the matter of life and death, and still he had a gnawing feeling that it didn't feel like a choice for Gabriel. 

“There's no life for us,” Gabriel said impatiently. Then his tone shifted and he made an affectionate humming sound. “I know you meant what you said, Jackie. I believe that you want me back even when I'm like this, that your feelings haven't changed. I know you swore me devotion and you've held up your end of that, but... this is what is left of me. I'm sorry I can't give you anything else.”

He sounded heartbreakingly sincere, and despite everything Jack felt a need to lean over and wrap his arms around him and just hold him. He wanted nothing more than to gather that broken man into his arms and tell him that everything was going to be okay, he could fix it whatever it was and he could and would save him. All these grand emotions and mighty intentions swirled around in his head but at the same time he knew they were just that: grand emotions and intentions. 

As if he could save Gabriel. As if Gabriel could be saved from something that had already happened. 

“Come on, Jackie. It'll be fine,” Gabriel whispered, coaxing him gently. “We'll become untouchable. We'll be eternal.”

“Gabe... Dead people are just gone,” Jack carefully said. “Dead people disappear.”

“I know!” Gabriel snapped, a desperate edge in his suddenly louder voice. Jack jumped and again almost raised his hands. 

“I know that,” Gabriel repeated with a calmer voice. “This is all I have left, Jackie, don't you see? This is everything I have, everything that I can share with you. Please, please just let me give you this.”

It was a deeply sincere request and it rang with truth. It was clear that Gabriel wholeheartedly believed what he said, and the amount of despair in his voice hit Jack so hard he forgot everything he was going to say. It felt almost cruel to deny Gabriel what he was asking now that he was so vulnerable and offering everything he had on open palms, begging Jack to accept it. 

Jack wanted to give in. He wanted to prove how much he cared and how much he valued everything Gabriel had ever given him, every word, every vow, every deed, and those were many, and that he would never turn anything down. He had sworn eternity to him, and he was going to keep his word. 

“Gabe,” Jack spoke quietly and as softly as he could, “as much as I wanted to spend the rest of my days with you and die by your side, this is not the day. This is not the day we die, either one of us.”

“Yeah, you're right, this is long overdue,” Gabriel said, but his voice had a hard note in it now. He had no doubt deducted that Jack was rejecting him.

Jack hurried to continue: “We both have a job to do. We have a road ahead us and we need to continue on that. It doesn't have to end here, we have a reason to go on.”

Gabriel made a frustrated growl and re-aimed the gun again. He rolled his shoulders and cracked his neck that were both no doubt growing tense after holding the pose. “No, there's not,” he argued back. “We are both dead men, Jack. We are dead soldiers walking. If anything, this is _just_.”

“Dead people walk only in movies, poems and metaphors, Gabe,” Jack said. “We have both survived. We made it through, perhaps against all the odds and against someone's fucked up moral views, but we made it. We _live_. We can continue to do that.”

The gun rattled again, and Jack saw the barrel tipping down. He was slightly relieved that it wasn't pointing him in the face since that told him Gabriel's decision was probably wavering, but on the other hand it was still pointing him in the gut and that would definitely be a killshot from this range too. He wouldn't count himself a victor before Gabriel put the gun away altogether. 

“You don't put living things in a coffin, Jack,” Gabriel said. 

Jack bit the inside of his cheek. He had a nasty feeling that Gabriel wasn't talking about metaphors. 

“You _could_ put a living thing in it. A coffin is just a wooden box, Gabriel. There's nothing special about it, no magical powers or laws of nature. It's just a box,” Jack said firmly. 

Silence followed, and neither one broke it. The hourglass was running out of sand. 

“Do you think you can save me, Jack?” Gabriel asked suddenly. His voice was bitter. “You can't even save yourself.”

He said it to hurt him, Jack knew it from the hard edge and the way he almost spat the words, and he knew they were true. Truth hurt. He didn't reply.

“Didn't you come here to die, huh?” Gabriel continued. “You came after me because you can't abandon your husband, and you really are a man of your word, I give you that. But you _did_ come to me with death on your mind, didn't you? How else did you think this was going to end? What _possible_ other outcome would there be, huh? You didn't plan anything for us because you knew we would die tonight.”

The accusations hurt like a sun ray directly in the eye after spending hours in the dark. Jack didn't have anything that wasn't a lie or an excuse against that because Gabriel saw right through him, and he spoke the truth. Jack hadn't planned his way any further than getting Gabriel out of the base and into the car, and he had told himself it was because there was no way he could predict what the other would do or say. He had known it was uncharted territory, but he had denied he would embrace the obvious outcome.

Very briefly Jack thought about Ana and how he had lied to her that this wasn't a suicide mission. He wondered if Ana had seen through his lie, accepted his decision – he wouldn't be the first veteran soldier who'd made that decision – and still agreed to help him. 

The thought hit Jack like a bucketful of cold water. Ana had let him go, perhaps with the knowledge that she would never see him again. 

“You're right,” Jack said. There was no response, and Jack could tell that Gabriel was taken aback by his reply. That was good, now he had an opening to go for. “I came to you without anything further planned than getting you to the car and taking you to a private location. I knew you'd come with me and that you'd probably gladly kill me, and I didn't care. I just wanted to see you and talk. But that doesn't mean we have to take the obvious route now. I didn't know anything what had happened to you, I didn't know about everything you had lost and I didn't know what to do. Think about all the things we didn't know before tonight, Gabe. Think about how much everything's changed.”

Gabriel took a long, deep shivering breath, held it and then let it out. Jack wondered if he was crying again. 

“I still don't have anything else,” Gabriel muttered, “I have nothing ahead of me. You can't rescue me, Jack.”

“I'm not here to rescue you,” Jack said. He wasn't, he had learned long ago to let go of that kind of thinking. “You belong to you. I'm not here to pick you up and store you away like fine china, okay? But we can just... Keep trying. Keep driving. That's all it takes now.”

“You don't understand, Jack,” Gabriel groaned. He sounded exhausted. “I'm _dead_. The only right place for a thing like me is six feet under – “

Jack interrupted him: “Yeah, you're right, I don't understand. I can't. I don't know everything that's happened to you, and even if I did I still wouldn't understand.” He paused to let the words sink in properly. Gabriel didn't say anything back. 

“Gabe?” Jack called out.

“Yeah?”

“I'm sorry,” he said. “I'm so sorry about everything. I'm sorry I left you behind and I'm sorry what happened to you, and I'm sorry you feel like this. But I'm not sorry that you live, and I'm not sorry that I got to you tonight. And I won't apologize to anyone that we live.”

That was all that he had to say, and he fell silent after that. Oddly Jack felt at peace now, and if Gabriel decided to pull the trigger after all he would be okay with it. 

A long time passed. The radio was playing a song that wasn't in English, but the music was just background noise that was out of their minds the second they stopped paying attention to it. Jack turned his face towards the light in the ceiling and used it to look at Gabriel. He could almost tell the difference between the black of his coat and the brown of his skin, but only barely. He wanted to reach over and make up for his sight with his fingertips.

The song on the radio ended and for a second it was perfectly silent in the car. There was no other program on but an automated playlist, and after that dead second a new intro started to play. 

Suddenly Gabriel made a long, suffering sound as all the air escaped his body. He slumped back on his seat, let his head loll against the headrest and his hands drop on his lap. His gun clattered in his hold and the safety clicked back on. 

Jack felt relief flooding his body and he slumped down too like a string had been cut. A mild sense of victory tiptoed on the edges of his thoughts, and among with it was joy, the true joy of their reunion.

“I want to see you so bad,” Jack murmured out loud before he was able to stop himself. 

Gabriel turned towards him and wrapped his arms around himself. The shotgun lay forgotten in his lap. “No you don't. I wear a mask for a reason.” He sounded weary, his voice wasn't a single decibel louder than was necessary and it was plain. 

“I have scars too,” Jack reminded him and gestured at his own face and the two gnarly things cutting across it from his forehead and temple down to his cheek and chin. He knew they were sickly pinkish colour and the bad stitching had left a trail of white spots around them too.

“And still it was me whom Ana looked at as if I was something she wanted to scrape off from the bottom of her boot,” Gabriel huffed. “Believe me, you're still the pretty one of us.”

Jack frowned. “I want to see _you_ ,” he repeated. “I don't care how bad it is, I want to see you.” He lifted his right hand a bit and wiggled his fingers to suggest how he'd accomplish the task without his aids, and he partially hoped Gabriel wouldn't feel so exposed under his touch as he would under his gaze. 

And still he hesitated, shifting uncomfortably on his spot. 

“Gabe, it can't be that bad,” Jack said. “I've been listening to you this whole time, and you speak just fine, so you still have lips, teeth, tongue, a nose and your flesh over your cheeks like it should be. I've been staring at that skull too much, I'd like to look at you for a change.”

Gabriel scoffed and shifted again but didn't say anything, not to correct Jack or to make up any other reason. Jack sat still and didn't try to reach for him either, it was obvious he wasn't welcomed to do that.

Eventually Gabriel reached out himself, took a hold of Jack's wrist and lifted his hand to his face. 

Jack jumped at the sudden skin contact. Gabriel's hand was rough and warm around his wrist and all his fingers were there, but he had no time to marvel and map his palm longer than as second because then his fingertips landed on the side of his face. His thumb lay against his forehead, his little finger below his ear and the three others in his unkept hair. 

Jack took a deep breath to steady himself, turned on his seat and reached over with his other hand too. He found Gabriel's temple and allowed himself a small moment where he just held his face like that and let them both relax into the moment. Then he started carefully tracing the face below his fingers. 

He found Gabriel's strong brows and the broad bridge of his nose. The familiar high cheekbones were there, and Jack traced them to his mouth, his thin lower lip was the same under his thumb, and there he felt around the round edge of his jaw. The skin under his fingers was warm but rough and in some places almost rubbery and tough, and Jack guessed those spots were burn scars. He found long, bumpy scars cutting across Gabriel's face, messily healed and probably clearly different colour than the healthy skin, and on the second round around Jack spotted places along his brows and cheeks that were uneven, probably because of fractures and less than ideal healing. On the left side he found only a part of the ear. He found lines in his forehead and around his eyes that were new too.

But it was a face, and it was familiar one. Jack's methodical touches turned slowly into movements that were more like caresses, and he was reluctant to let go now that he had finally gotten this close.

Finally he let a smile spread on his face. “You still trim your beard?” he chuckled. He combed his fingers through the familiar shape of a thick goatee and the line along his jawline. 

“Uh. Yeah,” Gabriel said, clearly surprised that was the question that came first. 

Jack smiled fondly at him. “Have you gone gray at all?”

Gabriel huffed softly. “A bit. There are streaks of gray in my hair and in my beard, but not nearly as much as you, Snow-White.”

Jack chuckled but at the same time felt tears stinging in his eyes. 

Gabriel was most likely studying his features as well. They were close enough to hear each other's breathing clearly. 

“Your eyes aren't blue anymore,” Gabriel noted.

Jack raised his brows. “Oh? I didn't know that.”

“You can see with the visor on.”

“The visor covers my eyes. I can aim a gun but I can't look at my own face.”

“Oh. Right.”

Then Jack felt a careful touch of his own face. Gabriel stroked his cheek gently with the backs of his knuckles, and the tip of his index finger brushed at his ear.

“You groom as poorly as you used to,” he commented the stubble that Jack knew very well was uneven and in patches. “How do you even shave?”

Jack chuckled again and shrugged. Now he was clearly just cradling Gabriel's face and caressing him. “I just do. It's just that usually I don't bother.”

Gabriel leaned his forehead to his and stayed like that. They were both quiet. Jack let himself relax a bit and let his nose touch Gabriel's, then slip past it and press against his cheek. The pose was awkward because the gearshift was between them and they were both twisted a little on their seats, but being that close together felt too good to give up. 

He wasn't entirely sure if it was too quickly or not, but Jack leaned just a little bit closer to press his lips very briefly against the corner of Gabriel's mouth. It was just barely a kiss, merely a gentle press of dry lips near someone's mouth, but it was born out of the purest, aching affection and given so softly it became soothing and shy despite its firmness. 

Gabriel breathed out a small sound like he was wounded, and his hands slipped from Jack's face. He wrapped his arms tightly around his neck and pressed their faces together, pulling them together and clutching on like letting go would mean the other would vanish.  
Jack returned the gesture by dropping his own hands and wrapping them around Gabriel's back under his arms. He lay his hands flat on his back and pushed them along his shoulder blades. 

Gabriel gave him a kiss on his cheek and a second one closer to his mouth. His chapped lips brushed on Jack's scars and stubble, and Jack turned his head slightly to let him find his mouth. They kissed carefully, a little clumsy after all the time apart and almost too gently, but they kissed all the same and for a long time while breathing same air. One kiss turned into multiple smaller ones, each one stronger and little wetter, shy and full of longing. Gabriel pulled Jack against him almost painfully, and his nose pressed into Jack's cheek when he leaned in to to give him yet another kiss. 

Each kiss was given more than they were shared, like by giving them they could make up for all that had been lost, destroyed or missed. They kissed like it was soothing wounds, like it would make up for everything and do what words couldn't. It was doing the words _I missed you, I'm sorry,_ and slowly the kisses relented and it turned into an equally long and tight embrace. 

They stayed like that as long as they could, cheeks pressed together and slightly nuzzling, arms around each other, locking them in place. But the position was difficult, they were both leaning over the gearshift and sitting sideways on their seats, and it was starting to manifest as an ache. 

Jack loosened his grip a little and propped his chin on Gabriel's shoulder. Despite the ache in his back that was slowly turning insistent he felt like he was resting there. 

Gabriel broke their cocoon of silence. “Sun is rising.”

Jack was almost surprised how much time had passed. “Oh?”   
The brighter light inside the car kept his vision limited, but still he tried to pry outside of the window behind Gabriel.

“Yes. Can you see it?”

“Kind of, if I was outside,” Jack answered. 

The death-lock of an embrace Gabriel had him in loosened, and they leaned back into their own seats. Gabriel turned around to look outside of the side window and seemed thoughtful.

“I'm going to have to drive, right?” he asked. 

“Yeah. I can't use my aids for a while yet.”

Gabriel made a noise of understanding, and then silence.

In the end he didn't have to voice his thoughts, because Jack understood without him having to. Without saying a word Jack opened the door and stepped out of the car again, stretched his arms and back and walked around the hood to the passenger's side. He mapped the hood with his hands before turning his back and hopping on to sit on it.

Gabriel stepped outside with him and stood by as Jack stretched and found his way around. He shed his heavy leather coat and the other shotgun from the holster and threw them both in the backseat of the car next to Jack's rifle and bag before joining Jack on the hood of the car.

The sun was just a streak of light in the horizon but rising quickly, turning the sky bright yellow and pink and letting the light fall down the mountain side and into the valley below, and slowly its rays turned warm. 

They sat there together, side by side and leaning on each other. They were silent, and the sun rose up to touch both of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the end. They survived this all and each other, and now they can have this one sweet, cold morning before they have to try and move on again.   
> In case anyone wonders, [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GcR4Sgu0Fk) is the non-English song playing on the radio. 
> 
> Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed the ride, and if you did you can leave kudos with a click of your mouse. If you have anything at all to say to me about this work, drop a comment, it's what keeps us writers going. 
> 
> You can find me [on tumblr!](http://zombieheroine.tumblr.com/)


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